Redeeming & Wrestling

Read excerpts from the next two chapters of Gracing, and join us for a group discussion on Friday July 11

Jul 03, 2025

My father’s mother—my Grandma Florence—was a spunky, short, Italian woman who wore purple floral muumuus and smelled of Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion perfume. She pulled her thick, black hair, streaked with white, loosely back with bobby pins.

With a signature raspy laugh, she always made sure we had plenty to eat. She taught me that the foundation of cooking was olive oil, celery, onion, and garlic. She always knew the latest scoop about everyone in the family and was quick to send a little money to any she deemed in need.

An only child, she grew up near Hollywood, California. She was part of a large extended Italian family, whom I picture in my mind like Toula’s family from My Big Fat Greek Wedding—large, loud, food loving, and very invested in each other. But their strong tradition of family became increasingly fractured after they immigrated to America.

When Flo was only four years old, her father, Henry, left the family for another woman. On his way out, he told his wife, Esther, that he had met a woman in Portland and would be back if the woman wasn’t pregnant. He borrowed money from extended family, which he never repaid, and even took Flo’s piggy bank with him.

He never returned.

Flo and Esther were left shattered, with nothing. Flo remembered her mother holding her in bed, weeping and saying, “Why did he leave us? What did I do? How am I going to take care of you?”

Esther started a small restaurant, and the mother and daughter lived in an attached bedroom and bathroom in the back. She worked long days serving roast and potatoes, burgers and sandwiches. When her responsibilities became too much, Flo went to live with extended family while Esther paid for her care and continued to serve customers. She’d complain to Flo about “that no-good father of yours.”

Fast forward many years to after her mother had passed on, my Grandma Flo learned that her father had married the other woman and had raised three children with her. He stayed with his new family until his death. At one point, Flo was able to meet her half-sister, who showed her photos of their father with his new family—happy pictures like those celebrating birthday parties. Later, my elderly grandma, still wounded from her childhood loss, said, “I don’t know why he didn’t love me too.”

As her own life was nearing its end, her son—my uncle—reminded my grandma that she would be meeting her father on the other side. He put a picture of her father on the wall, in hopes that his image would facilitate forgiveness. Early on, my grandma would walk by his picture, point her finger at her dad and give him a what for.

“Bad boy!” she would scold.

As time went on, she softened ever so slightly. While never becoming particularly warm towards him, she at least became less hostile.

I wonder how the heavenly family reunion played out.

I wonder if there is still unfinished work.

Recently I did the unthinkable. I performed temple ordinance work for Beulah Elizabeth Schultz—the other woman who stole Henry’s heart away from my family. I pushed aside the sense of betrayal, as if I was condoning the harm to my family in which she was complicit. But I also had a meaningful sacred experience and felt like the work I was doing was holy—extending an olive branch of reconciliation between Florence, Esther, Henry, Beulah, and my entire family.

I have little clarity on what the whole temple experience means or what realities it brings about. But there is something powerful in the idea that remembering our dead—their suffering, their grief, their sin, their pain, their hopes, their missed opportunities—is in some way redemptive when we seek to make right what was wrong. In remembering Beulah, though we aren’t closely related, maybe I am offering something on behalf of my family that my grandma is no longer able to give but which Beulah can nonetheless receive. And maybe it’s not a betrayal on my part if I am simultaneously reaching for divine healing for all those harmed by this act of betrayal, both among the living and the dead. Maybe I am participating in something redemptive not just for Beulah, but also for my grandma.

I believe that is what Jesus’s grace offers. And as I seek to live in similitude of Him, I believe He asks no less of me.

Redemption may be another manifestation of gracing in that it facilitates not only divine forgiveness but also divine healing. Maybe all this points to Jesus—as everything seems to do—as a wholemaker who reconnects us with God, offering unmerited gifts which facilitate healing for both receivers and givers of wrongs.

The priest Gregory Boyle, who worked for years with gang members in Los Angeles, highlighted this paradoxical redemptive love. He recalled the “precocious, funny, bold” Betito, only twelve years old, who was gunned down by two young men that Boyle also knew. The bullet pierced one side of Betito’s abdomen and exited the other, and he died soon after a valiant surgical effort. How do I respond, Boyle asked in his grief, when “kids I love [kill] kids I love”? The faces of both victims and victimizers plead for compassion.

I love Terryl and Fiona Givens’s insight that sodzo, the Greek word translated as savior in the scriptures, is elsewhere translated as healer. With equal linguistic justification, we could call Jesus not only the Savior of the World, but also the Healer of the World—healer of both hard hearts and broken hearts, of abusers and abused.

There is a need for redemption on both sides. In doing temple work, it may seem that our efforts are one-sided. Those with power are often those with records. The powerless often lack paper trails. We have records for the victors and those who were privileged enough to be buried in marked graves, while the slaves, the poor, and those who never bore children often had no one to record their names. Surely that’s unjust. And in linking the human family through temple work, we run up against these incriminating realities.

Given this historical void, we could understandably give up on the temple project. But we’re a stubborn people. My hunch is that someday, when science catches up to the spirit of the temple project, we will be able to read our family records not just from birth certificates, marriage records, and tombstones, but from our bodies’ own genetic code. And whether we learn about our family in this way or another, there’s more to the project than linking names and checking off ordinances. We’re linking souls. We’re welding hearts from both sides of the veil and both sides of painful conflicts. In this effort, my overarching desire is in gathering the entire human family home to each other and to God.

That’s the fundamental work.

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REFLECT:

What scars of yours have been redeemed or transformed into gifts of perspective, growth, compassion, or strength? How did that happen? Did you feel God in the process?

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Chapter 8: Wrestling

My own dark night of the soul has frequently reared its ugly head in the form of chronic illness. It began just shy of twenty years ago, when I awoke at night to use the bathroom and discovered it hurt to walk. It was as if someone had been hammering the tops of my feet in the night while I slept—some deranged little elf on a sadistic mission.

In the morning and as the day progressed, the pain would dissipate. But at night, the phantom would return for his nightly poundings. It was bizarre, because I couldn’t trace the pain to an injury and because it didn’t follow the predictable pattern of pain (more intense, then less, then gone). Rather, it would come and go, sometimes reappearing in a different location, sometimes increasing rather than decreasing in intensity. It was haphazard and unsettling.

Since the diagnostic protocol looked not just at lab tests or imaging but at a full clinical picture over time, it took several years to receive the eventual diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease that frequently affects joints. In autoimmune disease, the immune system is in overdrive. It detects pollen—attack! Peanuts—attack! Any number of other benign triggers—attack! It may even be bored due to our hypersanitized world—attack! Like other autoimmune diseases, RA warps the immune system into a trigger-happy mania that causes collateral damage as it fights against nonexistent enemies. Detonating its arsenal against vague shadows on the wall, it leaves a broken battleground in its wake—my body. And there is no cure.

In addition to my feet, other joints became affected in the initial years—fingers, wrists, knees, and shoulders. I remember those cursed little onesie snaps during my son’s nighttime diaper changes—how absurdly painful it was to pinch those snaps closed. Or lifting my arms slowly above my head to put on a shirt, wincing as my shoulders burned. Or doorknobs—those brilliant little inventions that keep young toddlers out of forbidden areas, but which at times required one hand bracing the other to ease the twisting in my throbbing wrist.

In addition to pain, there is frequently a dragging fatigue associated with autoimmune illness—as if you have ankle and arm weights as you walk through a sea of Jell-O wherever you go. Simple tasks take longer. They’re harder. It feels like the day after you’ve had the flu, when you’re achy and beat, but every day is Groundhog Day, and that day never ends.

Of course, the whole disease ebbs and flows, and some months or years are better than others. In my case, it has warped into a distinct but related autoimmune disease called scleroderma. Whereas rheumatoid arthritis frequently attacks joints, scleroderma targets the skin. The name scleroderma means “thick skin,” which describes the thickened skin that affects many sufferers. But like rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma causes pain and fatigue. It can also attack inner organs, becoming life-threatening if it decides to battle it out with organs such as the heart or lungs. It’s a confusing disease both because of its varied manifestations and its uncertain course.

Lately, it’s my muscles that cause me the most pain. I don’t know if it’s due to a different disease altogether, a side effect from medication, or an unusual manifestation of my growing list of diagnoses. It seems like a paradoxical response to pain, but many days there is nothing I would like more than that little maniacal elf to come back with his hammer and pound my muscles into oblivion. Wrestling with chronic disease often means wrestling with a language problem. I can’t go to my doctor and say it hurts here, and then point to my whole body. I can’t say, please doc, just send me to someone who will squeeze the deep aching from my arms and legs like toothpaste. Please just fix me.

Sometimes, in my dark nights, I pray God would swoop down and take me for a heavenly field trip—not a permanent one, mind you, but just a brief breather. Just for one day.

It’s tempting to wallow in an immature self-pity—turning into myself, becoming caged with only my own suffering. But this is not who I want to be. Another inclination is to downplay my own suffering because many have it so much worse: horrific abuse, loneliness, betrayal, slavery, gnawing hunger, and violent war. Yet I also know this isn’t a suffering Olympics. There are no medals for the most-wounded winners. Comparisons are counterproductive. I’m simply hoping to carry my own cross well, seeking to live a life imbued with grace.

And so, my question resurfaces. Where is God in the burrows of the gruesome, ugly tarantula hawk wasps? Where is God in chronic illness? Where is grace in the painful, distressing, soul-wrenching dark nights?

One of the unique challenges of chronic illness is its ambiguity. Most days, a person lives in a confusing no-man’s-land between health and sickness. It’s often a blurry place of not-quite-sick and not-quite-well.

I may show up to an evening event looking seemingly fine, but I’m able to be there because I have carefully and intentionally rationed my energy during the day. My cross is invisible. I almost never use a wheelchair; I don’t limp or carry a visible marker like an oxygen mask or feeding tube. But I also don’t run or even stand for long, nor do I spend long days meandering through shopping malls or amusement parks.

I’m careful—measured. Even my movements are rationed. There’s a kind of carefree recklessness even in something as benign as conversation—a gesticulation of the arms, large inflections of the voice, an unpredictable expressiveness of the face. But I’ve found that even my conversation reflects this careful conservation. I stay closer to my body. The words are rationed and the movements smaller, slower, and more intentional.

The therapist and multiple-sclerosis sufferer Robert Shuman observed of his progressing illness that “once-simple choices about trips to the city or walks downtown become intensive, hypervigilant, body-scanning, problem-solving matters.” I can relate. Is there a place to sit down? Can I politely excuse myself from a conversation without it being socially awkward? What is my body needing right now—have I demanded too much of it, stretched it too far? Is my body so bossy that it will prevent me from being sufficiently focused on the social task at hand? What will this cost me later today? Tomorrow?

A few years ago, I was at a low point. Daily I felt drained from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning. Even showering felt like a monumental task—so big. So heavy. One day I switched a load of laundry in the basement and then lay down on the floor because it was too much effort to walk the half flight of stairs to the family room. Sitting upright at the table for a meal was sometimes too much. There was no relief in sight, and I had no idea how I could be a mother and wife, let alone a fulfilled human being in this body that was absolutely void of vitality. I had nothing.

My sense of spiritual connection was also at an all-time low. The gospel message was “turn to Jesus. He will not forsake you.” But the invitation seemed suddenly inane, nonsensical. I felt forsaken. Utterly abandoned and forgotten by God. The chasm between what God offered and what I believed Him to be capable of offering was entirely too wide, and I found myself stranded in the gap. My arms stretched wide between two truths—the attentive God I trusted, and the absent God I experienced.

There in the dry, parched no-man’s-land was my wrestle. I was Jacob, wrestling with the messenger and crying, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” (Gen. 32:26). I was Sarah, abandoned between promises of a numberless posterity and the reality of an empty womb (Gen. 17:16).

And time stretched on. So much time.

In hunger, I turned anew to all the things that were supposed to help me discover Jesus. My scripture study was not orderly or methodical. I clung to the words of Isaiah, which became almost a mantra for me:

For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with ever- lasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. (Isa. 54:7–8)

I read the promises over and over, though deep down I wondered if the words were just pretty poetry and nothing more.

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. (Isa. 43:2–3)

My prayers were urgent, though they were largely without words. I stumbled along, doing what I could to care for myself and my family, but feeling very much a forsaken failure. My attentive husband literally carried me when I needed it and, along with family and friends, sat with me, cleaned our house, brought me dinner, and pointed me to hope. I listened to Christian hymns on repeat:

“When peace like a river attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul!”

I practiced daily for grace. Absent experiences of grace, I clung to practices out of desperation.

“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart

Naught be all else to me, save that thou art

Thou my best thought, by day or by night

Waking or sleeping, thy presence, my light.”

One day—I can point to the exact place I stood in my bedroom, next to my Great-Grandma Esther’s hand-me-down jewelry box—I was pondering some scriptural examples of unflinching faith, including the biblical Esther, who declared, “if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). There were also Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who knew that God had the ability to deliver them from the fiery furnace, but also knew that if He didn't, they would remain faithful (Dan. 3:17–18); and Mary, who with absolute sub- mission said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38).

And I asked myself, if I got to the point where I simply could not find the divine communion and spiritual healing I sought, what would I do? Would I give up on the Lord? Would I turn elsewhere?

Almost as I thought this, in a holy, perhaps mystical experience which I can only call gracing, I knew that I would never turn my back on the Lord. It was simultaneously a decision, a feeling, a direction, and a command. It was also a scripture and a hymn:

Even if I live my whole life and never find the peace I seek, I will not give up on the Lord. I will wait upon Him however long it takes.

On the surface, these words barely touch the significance of the experience for me; I admit they seem wholly unextraordinary. But the experience itself was fire. It was unclear what part of this lightning bolt stemmed from me and what part from God. In some ways, its intensity convinced me that it could not have emerged from my weak self, which was entirely too fickle and frail for such bold declarations. But in another sense, this conviction seemed to stem from the most authentic part of myself— the spiritual core that knew God intimately, even through veiled vision.

But also, in a strange inexplicable way, the demarcation between me and God seemed irrelevant. In communion with God, we were one and the same—indistinguishable. It was a duet, a dance, a covenant: a gift given and a gift received, a promise made and a promise trusted. It wasn’t submission; it was collaboration and union.

After the long wrestle, like Jacob, I had prevailed (Gen. 32:28). Like Sarah, I laughed (Gen. 18:12). I had been given power from God and all was new.

Isaiah had promised that the rivers would not overflow me (Isa. 43:2), and this moment felt like a gasp for air after having been held underwater for too long. It was an awareness of the feathers being lifted ever so slightly—pointing me towards the enveloping air that was present the whole time, embracing me in grace.

Over the next few months, my physical health improved and became more manageable. Though it continues to challenge me, and I still have bad days and months, the spiritual epiphany continues to center me when I feel the waters gathering blackness. When I pass through the waters, I remember: the Lord will be with me. And when I flounder in the gap between my hope and my experience, where it’s too dark to see, I wrestle.

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REFLECT

When did you confront a totally unjust or evil situation?

Was God there?

If so, what was God’s role?