worse than sickness
My skin—freckled, birthmarked, mole-spattered, and acne-prone—has never been my greatest feature. As time hurtles forward, I notice, almost vaguely, where there are creases in my forehead, around my eyes, and how the skin on my stomach pleats into so many tiny wrinkles when I bend over. Only recently have I ordered an age-defying (whatever that means) face serum, and considered that perhaps using bar soap and an occasional lotion would do little to preserve the mirage of youth.
Months ago, I broke out into what I thought was a new-deodorant induced rash. I stopped using deodorant. The rash persisted. I kept assuming it would go away, and yet it clung to my armpits with toddler-like tenacity. Red, sleek, and insanely itchy.
My daughter told me there was a monster named Ralphie living in my hair and scratching my head. But I can’t blame Ralphie for the patches under my arms, or for the rough, scabby scales on my elbows, or the strange pustules forming on my toes or palms, or for the rash on my chin that looks like acne and itches worst of all. Ralphie isn’t real, but the diagnosis that popped up in my dermatology chart is: psoriasis.
I thought it was a simple skin condition (I’ve heard the word and assumed it was akin to eczema). Actually, psoriasis is an autoimmune disease, neither curable nor definite in its causes. I cried a little when I read the lab report. I see autoimmune and think my body is destroying itself.
I feel older than I am most days, and panicked by my quickly-dissolving youth. To me, this is proof that I am no longer young: I am, to some degree, sick.
Plenty of people have suffered and will suffer far more than what I will experience with a disease that reveals itself in my skin. I don’t care what I look like, and I can deal with the itches. I care because it confirms that something is wrong with me.
Somehow, I’ve spent thirty-four years convincing myself that there is nothing wrong with me. I’m strong, I’m healthy, I’m young. I’m alive (though occasionally crippled by anxiety that I won’t be for long).
There has always been something wrong with me. I have never been fully alive; my youth has always been slipping, my health fluctuating, my body healing and failing and struggling and thriving. I’m human. I think about how Eve must have felt in the garden after eating the fruit, hiding her shame and her nakedness, that horrible realization that something is wrong.
I’ve always been born of Eve; Adam has always been my ancient father. There has always been something wrong with me.
Not merely wrong in my body, wrong in my being. Since learning I have psoriasis, I have reminded myself, over and over, that my sin is worse than my sickness. Honestly, many days I feel that the reverse is true: I’m not that bad, I’ve followed Jesus most of my life, I need physical healing more than I need forgiveness. Urgently, I try to locate the triggers for my disease and scramble to find the right vitamins to minimize the inflammation in my body. But do I throw myself into purging the evil from within me with the same haste and devotion? Honestly, no.
Currently, I’m not in the midst of a flare, but I do have remaining scales and pustules that I absently scratch throughout the day. And when I pay attention, I try to remind myself: my sin is worse.
And maybe this is good, in a strange way, to have a diagnosis that, while not severe or life-threatening, wakes me up to the reality that I have not been in the garden and only now understand what I have broken. I’ve always been outside its gates.
Now, to find my hope in something other than a reliable body, because mine has never been, even without a line in my chart. To remember I do not hope for a glorified body, but for the glory that will be revealed.[1] There is peace, and even though the garden is lost to me, heaven is not.[2]
[1] Rom 8:18
[2] Rom 5:1-3, 2 Cor 5:1
