Hello gentle-people,
I am in my second week of post-op recovery, and it is going better than I expected. Sometimes, I forget I have a big incision to mind as I go about my day. I remember best when I go to cough, sneeze, or laugh, and I feel the invisible corset tightening around my abdomen. I miss deep belly laughs, but I trust they will return soon enough. For now, I let the chuckles rise up from my chest in a way that sounds fake.1
I feel a deep grounding gratitude for everyone who contributed to my Meal Train. Deep gratitude for the people asking, “Do you need anything?” which echoes into deeper gratitude that I can respond, “I have everything I need.”
This is an example of a gentle landing.
A gentle landing is a tangible hold, like the one I feel in the company of my two best friends since middle school. We have been living together in one of their apartments for the last week. This is precious time for us since we live in three different states and are so rarely in the same place. My surgery brought us together to discover there is still so much to learn about each other after 20+ years of friendship.
I finished a book this past week called Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) by Kate Bowler. Bowler, a historian who has written on the history of the prosperity gospel movement, writes in this book about her experience being diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. She explains that the prosperity gospel offers us a theodicy, or justification for suffering, through the belief that sheer determination and positive thinking can change our circumstances.
In a prosperity gospel-driven church, people come to lay hands on you, believing in the power of miracles alongside the belief that an illness like Bowler’s is one caused by grave sin. Bowler confronts the lies so many of us love while also praying to be saved herself, signaling that even she struggles with unchecked prosperity gospel beliefs. As she surrenders to the uncertainty of her life going through treatment that gives her the outcome of two months to live,2 she finds something tangible to hold. Or rather, she is held by a deeply tangible community:
“At a time when I should have felt abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes. I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all those who hummed around me like worker bees, bringing notes and flowers and warm socks and quilts embroidered with words of encouragement. They came in like priests and mirrored back to me the face of Jesus.
“When they sat beside me, my hands in their hands, my own suffering began to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others, a world of those who, like me, are stumbling in the debris of dreams they thought they were entitled to and plans they didn’t realize they had made.”
—Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved), p.121
If you ask me, I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. But sometimes I want to. Sometimes, like Kate Bowler, I have moments where I reflect on residual prosperity gospel beliefs I am still clinging to. I may continue to confront these lies, if not in myself, then in the well-meaning things people say in the face of pain, loss, and grief.
As I lean into rest and recovery, I can’t help but feel like a student of this body. My body is teaching me that I cannot go on living a disembodied life. I am also learning that I can’t go on pretending I can live an independent life—I want a life of floating on love.
Landing Track
What moments stand out for you when you recall tangible expressions of a gentle landing? Who are the people that make it possible?
Do you struggle to let people be here for you? What does it look like for you to let others come alongside you, take your hands, and sit with you through moments of suffering?
What is your body teaching you about interdependence? What other lessons can you draw from the exploration of your body as a teacher?
When I explained this to a friend who came to visit this past week, he laughed. Then I did my fake-sounding laugh, which made him laugh some more, which made me laugh some more. We went back and forth like this for a while, with the laughter reaching my sore abs despite my best efforts. Laughter has never felt so good and so bad at the same time.
As of today, Kate Bowler is in remission and is very much alive.
1. the imagery of this post was such rich just from the title that I didn't have anything to say until today. whew. a nugget popped out of me with this line: "My surgery brought us together to discover there is still so much to learn about each other after 20+ years of friendship." curiosity is a powerful part of the love ethic I think about. even after 20 years being curious is a gentle landing to me and I hope to cultivate this with those who know me.
I experienced a gentle landing recently. I got some very bad news about my vocational dreams, and the folks around me have held me so gently and carefully as I process it. I am deeply grateful to rest in their love.