A PAINFUL GIFT

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I spent the past several days visiting my brother who is in his mid-eighties and who uses a walker or a wheelchair to get around -- even to his dialysis treatments three times a week. He never complains about his disabilities and his diminishing powers.

During those days I happened to be reading No Journey Will Be Too Long: Friendship in Christian Life by Jose Mendonca, and came across the following in Chapter 13 (pp 102-103). 

I have often heard the poet Tonino Guerra quote the words of a medieval monk: "We must move beyond mere perfection." In friendship it is precisely this that confronts us: Perfection can be a path that we tread superficially, or an illusion that prevents us from gaining access to what is real and true. We spend so much time even in losing the mania of perfect things, perfect persons ...
...
It is the impact of frailty in us that reveals our deepest reality, shows us the life of God and his footprints. In this sense, imperfection makes us human.

The last three lines above came back to me as I walked the corridors of the assisted living facility where my brother and his wife are living at the moment. 

It is the impact of frailty in us that reveals our deepest reality, 

What a gift -- to realize that your frailty, far from burying the "real" you under layers of disability and diminished powers is actually revealing to you your deepest reality!

[Our frailty] shows us the life of God and his footprints. 
What a gift -- to make use of your frailty as a unique, privileged lens through which you can see deeply into the hidden life of God, and through which you can see God's footprints everywhere, even in the dialysis center! 

In this sense, imperfection makes us human.
Surely frailty and imperfection make you feel that you are falling short of what you used to be, or that your life is now somehow less that it once was; in that sense you feel less human. But Jose Mendonca contradicts that view and insists that imperfection makes us human. We can stop trying to be God (the only perfect being) and simply be our own funky selves, imperfect, frail, and trying to grow every day into the person that the Lord had in mind when creating us.

Maybe this message is not just for the residents in the assisted living facility; it can help to the rest of us who are watching our loved ones cope with diminishment. It's an opportunity for all of us to "move beyond mere perfection" to something deeper and more life-giving.