Being Led

            In the Gospel of this First Sunday of Lent, we hear that Jesus “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days.”  Being led implies an act of surrender.  Moreover, the particular place to which Christ is led is not a humanly hospitable one.  But, very mysteriously in light of the duration of “forty” days, we are led to believe that the Lord is tracing and recapitulating a path traveled by many others over the span of many years, most notably the forty years of the Israelites being tested in the desert wilderness in their movement from slavery to freedom.

            I have already written about the stark truth that any chronic illness poses:  one is inescapably led into a place one would---given the choice---rather not go.  My jaw problem led me into a whole new world of pain and anatomy and specialized medicine.  It was for me bewildering, uncharted territory.

            From the outset, I had to face the complexity and impersonal character of our contemporary health care system, which is in myriad ways not only inhospitable (pardon the pun) but even pathological.  One of the first discoveries I made in this regard is that the clinic of my specialist requires cash up front.  The clinic office then fills out the necessary paperwork for the patient to submit to the insurance provider, placing the burden on the patient to do the necessary haggling and battling to be reimbursed.  The business aspects of medical care have become so onerous that many of the best doctors are just opting out of the system altogether.

            But once “inside” the specialist’s care (thanks to Bishop Rhoades’ continued support of my health), I then was amazed at being led by a whole series of very well defined protocols---for examination, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.  I had an overwhelming sense that my path had been traveled by many others before me, and this was a great consolation.

            Even seeing the succession of people in the Piper Clinic’s waiting room as I have come to it over these past months has given me much to ponder.  Some patients are making their initial visit and are clearly as dazed and confused as I had been.  Others were farther along but still at the beginning of their path, still others farther along than me.  I even recall the haunting pleas of the woman in the treatment room next to mine (she was so loud I could not help but hear her through the walls) who in tears told Dr. Piper that she had been to twenty-three other doctors without successful treatment of her problem!

            It is staggering to contemplate how much individual human suffering and medical trial and error created the path, so to speak, of the protocols for my healing.  TMJ surgery is notoriously tricky and does not, statistically speaking, have an abundance of happy outcomes.  The generic medical websites one can consult on the internet almost unanimously recommend against having it, even when other less drastic measures have been tried.  I had many people counsel me personally not to go down the path of surgery for this problem (including the cab driver who drove me to my hotel from the airport the night before my initial evaluation!). 

            It was Dr. Piper himself who recounted to me that he discovered the fat graft technique of TMJ surgery---filling the joints not with artificial implants made of Teflon or steel, for example, but with the body’s own fat---when he had to treat patients who had suffered so many failures with other techniques that their bodies couldn’t handle any more implants.  Dr. Piper admitted to being led to realize that “you can’t do better than the body’s own Designer.”

            Immediately following my eventual surgery, I had to be led up and down the halls of the hospital by my Dad and Larry Garatoni, my caregiver.  In the case of my father, it was a particularly poignant mystery for this seventy year old man and his forty-three year old son to find such simple delight in the halting initial steps growing ever stronger and going ever farther up and down the recovery unit corridor every half hour.  May the day not come for many years when I shall have to return the favor. . . .

            On my final visit to the Piper Clinic, one week after surgery, I was entirely pleased with my healing progress.  As I entered the waiting room, I encountered a woman who was---the next day---going to have the very same surgery that I had had.  She was so visibly reassured and genuinely moved to have me answer her questions, describe my experience, and give her pointers on what to expect and what to do and not do.  At the end of our conversation, I assured her that I would pray for her (she saw by my clothing that I was a Priest), especially as she was undergoing surgery tomorrow.  She told me that she believed me.  In expressing her deep gratitude and relief, she then spontaneously made the strangest remark: “I hope that God didn’t make you go through all of this just for me.”

            What, I thought at the moment, if He had?  I was so grateful (and remain so) that I do in fact believe that one life given for another is, in Christ, infinitely worth the cost.  Of course, such are not our calculations to make.  When Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert, He goes to connect all human lives across all chronology and geography.  As the Divine Physician and humble patient, Christ enters our suffering by trial and without error.  And in doing so He fills what is dis-jointed and dis-integrated and dis-eased with the very substance of His own Person.  The Designer does indeed know what He is doing.  And when He and we are finally led into the mystery of the Cross together---in the holy communion of transformative charity that extends everlasting healing throughout His Mystical Body---no matter where in the desert we find ourselves, His voice leads on:  Today you will be with me in Paradise.