The Mark of the Lion

I used to think I would “get better” and then I would be strong. I thought I would recover from trauma and be triumphant. Not the case, friends. In fact, I feel more and more that suffering, surviving, healing, thriving, have made me weak. Weaker than I have ever been. 

Or maybe weak is not the right word. Maybe I am dependent. Maybe I have been hollowed out so deep that I am in a constant state of need, of an IV drip of sustenance, of a continuous, pumping-in of God. 

One of my closest friends–a sister, really–has become very ill in the past week. She is the one who has sat on my back porch with me and prayed and wept while my family nearly drowned in trauma after Sam’s last surgery (When Your Life is Not Marketable). 

It is altogether a disarming thing to walk into a hospital room and see one that you cherish as a patient. One who is younger, stronger–dare I say better?   

I want to be strong: strong for her. And yet, I feel so weak and incompetent. It seems that my deep love for this sister of mine in Christ disarms me, weakens me, even exposes my own scars. When I want to be so very much for her, the very pain of seeing her in pain disarms me. I trip over my words, my limbs, falter as I a hold back the tears. While wheeling her around the hospital floor, I actually kicked her most painful spot on accident. yeah. She had to be patient with me in my failing as I hurt her even in my desperate need to help.

It got me to thinking: that even as we want to be brave for one another, even as we try to show up and perform great feats of love, our humanness still wounds. Even as we try to say the right things, we say the wrong things. I am immediately convicted, time and time again, of all the times I’ve held people so responsible for their well-meaning but oh-so-missing-the-mark comments when I have been the patient, the mourner, the sufferer. 

In Francine Rivers’ Mark of the Lion series, the plot rests on a Jewish-turned-Christian slave girl named Hadassah who God places in the midst of this immoral, pagan Roman family. She serves their youngest daughter who literally chases after ever sin imaginable. Because of Hadassah’s simple, quiet and unwavering faith, she eventually is betrayed by her mistress and lives with excruciating scars–the mark of the lion–for the rest of her life. 

God heals Hadassah, but he does not take away her scars. They are evident for all to see: grotesque, even. She is painfully aware of her mark and goes to extensive lengths to shield others from the unnerving sight. And yet, God emboldens her to serve and love and heal in miraculous ways, despite her self-doubt. 

But that is the key, is it not?

God emboldens her. God fills her. God gives beauty to her most hideous pain.  

Hadassah, if you remember, was the Jewish name of Queen Esther before she entered King Ahasuerus’ harem and became queen of Persia (book of Esther). She hid her mark–being a Jew–as her Uncle Mordecai instructed her. And yet, it was this hidden treasure that God would use to save his people from annihilation. 

I am reminded again and again of my grotesque scars. The more I try to be strong, the more the wounds seep. And yet, God can use my weakness–my failing–to save me and my beloved. 

Do you have your own mark of the lion, friend? The scar you try desperately to hide, the scar that cripples you? 

Like Hadassah and Queen Esther, God can make yours and my scars the places of our deepest healing and effectiveness.