on good people and paralytics

So I've been thinking about a story I read in one of the accounts of the life of Jesus. It's the one where He is teaching in somebody's house, and the place is packed, and there's a noise coming from above and everyone looks up, shielding their eyes from the debris beginning to fall, and then the daylight is bursting through a massive hole in the roof and the backlit faces of four men can just be made out as they peer down at the crowd. The four guys on the roof didn't look too long; they were seeing if the hole they had torn in the stranger's roof would be big enough, and when they were satisfied, sure that it would be, they tied some rope to the four corners of a mat and lowered their paralyzed friend to the floor, right next to Jesus, and they waited to see what would happen.
When I read the story, I could feel the tension growing, could choke on the dust in the air and hear some of the religious leaders shouting, their voices adding to the chaos of it all, and see the crowd about to boil over and in the midst of it all there's a man laying on a mat.
This is one of the stories in scripture I have a hard time with.
I was talking about it one morning with my friend Greg. Greg was on the team that launched the Hubble Space Telescope, but he has trouble finding his way around our zip code. Even so, Greg can somehow listen to someone talk about big issues in their life, find his way to the core of what is being said, and ask the questions that point the person in the right direction.
"I can't figure this paralyzed guy out," I told him. I wrapped my hands around the warm mug of coffee and looked at my reflection in his sunglasses. "Everyone else in the story is doing exactly what I would do if I were them. The friends are trying to help the helpless. Jesus is looking for the greater truth in the situation and offering it as a teaching moment. The crowds are making noise. But then there's the guy on the mat."
"What's so hard about the guy on the mat?" he asked.
"I just don't know if I could do it; I mean lay there and let people carry me."
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands behind his head. "Do you think that's a pride issue for you?"
I wanted to tell him, "No, it wasn't," and that I didn't have an ego and I thought of others more than I thought of myself and I hung out with homeless people and all that stuff, but something inside me told me I should just shut up and at least entertain the thought that I had a problem with pride.
I wondered if the man had been left paralyzed after a tragic accident at work, or if he had been born that way, and now his limbs were contorted from decades of muscles in atrophy. In the end, I decided that it didn't matter; it's always hard to be carried.
Greg said we all have some sickness and disease that can leave us helpless and if we want to be healed we have to let others help. I confessed that that was hard for me, because the disease I struggle with is individualism. "I haven't always been like that," I told him, "but somewhere along the way some wires inside me got crossed and I learned the best way to not be abused was to avoid." I'm certainly not alone in that.
He reassured me that a part of that was healthy, that if someone has a reputation of being a gossip you shouldn't confide in them, and if someone has a track record of lying you shouldn't trust them. "The problem," he said "is if you write everybody off because you're scared they will hurt you, or because they have hurt you before, then pretty soon you're left with no one to carry your mat and no way to be healed."
We talked some more; about people needing to be carried, about how I sometimes put up walls, and how I could be intentional about having that sickness in me healed. After we finished talking I went to the park near my house and started to journal some of my thoughts. I wrote about how I craved community, but still distanced myself from the people I could have it with. I wrote that I wanted to quit being someone that put up walls, and if I truly wanted that I would have to be intentional about inviting people to be a part of that process. I wondered if I even had four friends I trusted, or, even less likely, four people in my life I hadn't alienated myself from.
The beautiful thing about that time in the park was that, when I started to think of people in my life, I was able to identify four friends easily.
There's Brandon; the only guy in Columbia to stick by me, to stand by my side and say "This isn't right," when I was fired because my wife had an affair. He would rage with me when I felt like screaming, he would do ninety down the highway throwing bottles at signs and watching them explode and then sit silently on my porch while we smoked and asked ourselves, "Why?"
We ride, and crash, motorcycles. We go climbing, and camping. We drink Guinness. He told me once that things were going to get better, and i could hear in his voice that he wanted it to be true.
There's Petey. I thought about how he never knows what to say, and how that frustrates him, but I'm fine with him just being there.
A few years before all "the bad stuff" happened, Petey and I went on a road trip. Six cities in two and a half days, or something absurd like that. I can't remember if we slept or not. I do remember if you took all the words we said to each other during the trip it would probably be less than the words in this paragraph. That trip- the driving, the baseball game, the absence of unneeded words, was one of my favorite memories. There could never be a person who cares more about others than Petey.
There's Heather Peebles. You would not believe the crush I once had on her. One night, at a rec league softball game, I ran back from shortstop to make a tough play on a ball blooped over my head. I dove just as my roommate came charging in from center field. My head hit his knee.
When I regained consciousness, several of my teammates- all doctors- were standing over me.
"John, what day is it?" they asked.
"Heather Peebles," I said. I couldn't understand why they were all laughing.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Heather Peebles."
A few weeks later, Heather and I were sitting on a dock, pretending it was warmer than it was. I could tell she was cold, shivering even, and i knew we should go inside. Before we left, I worked up the courage to ask her if I could take her on a date. She shot me down. It turned out I was seen more like a brother, and we were doomed to life as friends.
She is an amazing friend. She constantly tells me how my life is an encouragement to her, and how she's so proud to have me as one of her friends, and for some reason, when she tells me things like that, I believe her.
She can say things that are hard to hear with such love it's impossible to think she has anything but my best on her mind.
There's my high school friend, D.A., who I reconnected with after moving back to Charleston. He's the definition of a persistent friend. D.A. refuses to let me put up walls, and he does it by telling me everything going on in his life, the good things and the bad, all the triumphs and all the sin. We will sit at a bar, or on the pier down by the Battery, and talk about the messiness of life, and when we're done, none of our problems are solved, but we feel less alone.
There's others, too. Trey and Theresa and Sarah. Liz, Drew, Kate, Nicole. I could list more. The point is, I would do anything to help any one of them, but it's hard for me to ask the same from them.
That day at the park I decided that that was stupid of me. All of them would love to carry me if I needed it, and they wouldn't feel like they were doing me a favor, they would feel like they were being my friend.
I decided I would let them carry me, let them help me break down the walls I've built up. Heather told me that she was glad for that, and that if I didn't let them, I'm not being fair to them because it was something they would benefit from as well.
Sometimes, paralyses is forced on you; you're abandoned, abused, lied to, dumped, or fired. It's hard to get over. Sometimes, you're born with it. There's something innate that keeps you from being whole.
Sometimes, you can feel that change is coming, you can feel it in your chest, as if at any moment your atrophied muscles and forgotten limbs are going to explode into motion, and all you can do is lay there, still, and full of hope.