The White Gloves, The Hidden Tear, and The Medicine of the Soil
The clinical systems of this world are incredibly rigid. They look at a human soul through the cold lens of a medical chart, prescribing protocols, counting limitations, and treating severe trauma with a sterile, procedural distance. But when a human spirit falls into the heavy, silent quicksand of deep depression, the clinical machinery reaches its absolute limit. It cannot manufacture a reason to live. To see the ultimate antidote to despair, we have to look down at a tiny, four-year-old girl marching straight into a hospital ward dressed in a handmade pink Easter coat.
During the grueling six-month wilderness track following my mother’s catastrophic brain stem stroke, a dark, heavy cloud of clinical depression settled over her room. She had survived a three-week coma and a double respiratory arrest, she was completely spent. She refused to engage, refused to try, and the therapists simply could not get her to do anything. Man’s system was completely stuck.
That is when a beautiful, restless inspiration intercepted my path–or what I now call one of my “God Winks from the Loving Pursuer!” I knew that before the stroke, my mother and my four-year-old daughter, Jen, were an inseparable pair–bound by a quiet frequency of pure joy. I harbored deep concerns about bringing a toddler into a heavy respiratory unit, until little Jen walked up to me holding her own notebook. She had drawn explicit, detailed crayons-and-paper pictures of Grandma in the ICU, surrounded by all her mechanical tubes. She meticulously explained the equipment to me in her own childhood vocabulary and pleaded, “Please, please let me see Grandma.” She wasn’t policed by the adult spirit of fear or intimidation: her eyes were entirely fixed on love.
The morning of the visit, Jen woke with the excitement of a 4-year-old who was about to go see her grandmother. She picked out her pink Easter outfit I had stitched for her, complete with white lacy ankle socks and those famous black patent leather Shirley Temple shoes every little girl wore in the 80’s. Then of course white gloves and a shiny white shoulder purse for the money she got her father to give her to buy mommy lunch at the hospital before seeing grandma. I still remember what a stunning ray of absolute blinding sunshine she was as I buckled her up in her car seat.
We were greeted by the traditional family relatives whose only purpose it seemed was to block us every step of the way with a wall of objection and fear as we entered the ICU unit. They screamed at me that a child shouldn’t be exposed to the messiness of a stroke. But by now I had grown so used to their supposed concern that I was able to ignore and walk right past them. It was not a surprise visit as I had talked it over with the staff and arranged the timing, so they had grandma ready. I picked up Jen pointed to and explained what all the machinery was and how it worked before putting her next to grandma in her hospital bed. She snuggled right next to her and just started talking, telling grandma what she and mommy had for lunch. There still was no reaction. So, the nurses came in and said we are going to get you up Sarah into this recliner so you can better enjoy your granddaughter.
At first, the concrete walls of depression didn’t budge. My mother kept her eyes tightly closed, completely ignoring us, refusing to acknowledge the room. Jen stayed in her bed playing with some of her toys, I sat next to my mother in the vinyl recliner, talking holding her hand trying to get a reaction, till feeling it was time to leave this was getting us nowhere. I asked her if she would like me to bring Jen back another day, Jen said, “oh please grandma, I want to come back.” I told my mother to squeeze my hand as hard as she could if she wanted her granddaughter by her side again. Through the fog of her medication and the heavy restriction of her traceostomy tube, her fingers suddenly clamped down, squeezing my hand with a desperate, tight strength and her lips silently mouthed the word: “OK.”
After that afternoon, Grandma officially started perking up, fighting for her recovery. and stepping back onto the path of her journey of marriage, family and life. The medical team couldn’t cure her despair alone; it took a four-year-old girl in white gloves and shiny shoes to completely shatter that concrete wall of despair and depression.
Modern religion loves to tell you that when a crisis turns dark and silent, you are entirely finished, it is over. The leaders push the “fear porn” of hopelessness as that is where the control is. But the code written in the sand dollar reminds us that the Master Potter works in the deep, messy soils of our lives. When you choose honor, relationship, and unshakeable bravery over the objections of the crowd, you unlock a supernatural medicine that can pull a soul straight out of the darkness.
Leave a Reply