Thirty-five surgeries and procedures, the loss of jobs, the robbery of ministry opportunities, the loss of finances, the total unbearable life of pain, all of it, all of it leaves a person to wonder what life is for.
Each day my wife, Karen, would leave home with me on the couch, curled up in pain. I was going from bed, to couch, to bed. That was my day. She never knew what she would find when she came home from work. She wondered if this was now going to be the way her life would play out for the rest of her days, and I couldn’t stop my damned pain.
She was deeply concerned about my depression. What she didn’t know was that I had quietly planned my own death. She wondered if she should hide my hunting rifles and shotguns because she saw what was happening. But I couldn’t bear the thought of her having to clean up the mess of my blood and brains.
Kerry Smith
I just couldn’t do it any longer. I was a fighter, not a quitter. When as a missionary, a deeply troubled man hurled his watch by my ear in frustration, I didn’t quit. When after my first fusion surgery left me bedridden, I didn’t quit carving birds. I just carved on my back, shavings and chips scattered about the bed, making do of an awful situation. I didn’t quit then; I couldn’t quit now.
So, I got up. It is right here that I played the age-old game with God called “Let’s Make a Deal.” Oh, Lord, if you will heal me, I will once again be a missionary for you.
Oh, damn it hurt! I walked to the mailbox. I walked up the street. I walked around our park. It still hurt. Maybe a little less. I walked laps. One lap. Two laps. A mile. Two miles. I joined a gym. Doctors asked me if I was nuts — the same doctors who had proposed fusing me from the base of my skull to my tailbone. I started lifting weights. 10lbs. 20 lbs. 40 lbs. 80 lbs. 160 lbs. 200 lbs. Still more of “Are you crazy?” and “Be very careful.”
And then to Karen I proclaimed I was ready.
Karen has taken students, faculty, staff and doctors and health care providers on 19 foreign mission trips as chaplain and campus minister at the Baptist University of Healthcare where she works. She always has said to me that she wished I could go. Finally, I said a healthy yes.
“Accepting my life of pain made living possible.”
Commercial break here. In lifting weights and getting in shape, I discovered the unbearable pain of getting in shape was almost a trade for my chronic pain. Sometimes this trade was terrible. Sometimes I could not go on with the rest of my day. It hurt, but I was going to hurt anyway. And therein was the key. Accepting my life of pain made living possible.
And so I was able to go on my first mission trip with Karen and her team even if it meant I was nothing more than a registrar for incoming patients at an island devastated by a hurricane five years earlier.
It was here in the midst of this place, many needs still unmet on the island, that I met a gentleman by the name of Floyd. Floyd was totally blind, wore sunglasses to cover his eyes from the unbearable sun and a ballcap. He walked with a cane to help him navigate his world of darkness.
He had been dropped off at our clinic by his sister to have his eyes checked by the specialists we brought with us, to see if his eyes could be saved.
He stood 3 inches from my face, a baseball cap shielding his cataract-covered eyes, and I felt no throbbing back pain, nothing shooting down my legs, only compassion. Deep, soul-searching compassion.
Floyd needed help while he waited for the doctor to examine his eyes, and I ended up being his caregiver for about five hours.
Floyd needed to go to the bathroom, and I guided him to the stall. Later, the smell of oranges filled the air while people waited to see the doctor. Floyd smelled them. The team had brought oranges to the clinic that day.
“Kerry, can I have an orange?” Floyd asked.
“Sure,” I said. So while he waited for his name to be called, I peeled an orange and gave it to him. He was still hungry, so I gave him a protein bar and he asked for more. (You do remember that Scripture passage where Jesus took the orange and protein bar and gave thanks and fed the thousands, right?)
Then, just before he was to go back to visit with the eye specialists, he proclaimed to me his own game of “Let’s Make a Deal!”
“Kerry,” he said, standing before me with his hazy blue eyes, “I have been praying to God about giving me my eyesight back, and if God would heal my eyes, I will give my life in service to him. I will become a preacher and a missionary.”
“If you suffer, you probably know this game well.”
If you suffer, you probably know this game well. If God will only stop this suffering, you will do so and so. Because often, if we have no answers for why, we shift to what we will do if God will heal us. We begin to negotiate with God for a way out of this hell hole.
I looked into Floyd’s cataract-covered eyes and saw the tears well up. Tears welled in mine as well because Floyd shared with me the real extent of his injuries and not only did he have cataracts but he had been in a construction accident that had left his eyes damaged, probably beyond repair.
It was precisely at that moment that I saw Floyd’s own game of “Let’s Make a Deal” and realized the Big Fella was holding the mic and I’m not sure he could offer Floyd any curtains. (I looked feverishly for Jesus’ recipe that I am sure he left in the table of contents of the Bible for that mud mixture he made and rubbed on the blind man’s eyes so that I could do the same for Floyd but lo, it wasn’t there.)
From my own tears Floyd could not see, these words from Floyd filled the steamy air: “Do you like seafood?”
“Do I like seafood?” I replied, “Why, Floyd, I like seafood as much as you like that orange you gobbled up while ago!”
Floyd chuckled and said, “On Friday, I am bringing you some fresh seafood.” Just then they called his name to see the specialist. I held his hand and led him through the myriad of chairs and people and beds to where the doctor was sitting.
Floyd’s sister returned right after I led him to see the specialist and I walked with her to be reunited with Floyd. After this, I went back to my duties as a registration helper where I sat down and pondered all these things I had stored in my heart and then, right on cue, my back started hurting again. While focusing so intently on the needs of Floyd, I had not noticed all that was wrong with my spine. I could only think about how Floyd could become whole.
After taking him to see the doctor, I never saw Floyd again.
Pain. Life altering Pain. Living my life void of opportunities by those who see me as not worthy of being able to physically champion the gospel. Permanently blind Floyd.
Let’s Make a Deal.
Kerry Smith is a master wildfowl artist who is a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a former church planter and strategist with both the Southern Baptist Convention and the American Baptist Churches USA.