Ghost Limb Syndrome

It has almost been a month since I last saw or heard from my family. Without forewarning, they are just – gone.

It’s hard to describe the specific type of paranoia this has induced- a mental fracture like cracked glass, an ever-widening spiderweb of divisive veins scoring deep roads across my psyche. Thoughts will start and stop abruptly. Every encountered crevasse requires a change in direction, or to hop across the cerebral chasm. Worse yet, all too often I am mired with indecision, stuck in a dead end. I hardly noticed it was occurring until I felt the effects of its fatigue.

It has one questing around corners, chasing down familiar sounds or going anywhere with the faintest hope of catching a glimpse or chancing an encounter.

Life has become a frantic exercise in observation. I note every car, I study every face. When I drive by a park, or frequent a store, I take desperate inventory of every body that I see, every movement, every silhouette, the gait of every stride.

Was that…? That sounded like… Wait, that couldn’t be…

Scene after scene races by in the movie theater of my mind where just yesterday normalcy played out in beautiful banality. The unspoken warmth that tethered all four of our hearts together was my reality, not this. So that is where they must be! Yes, surely!- at home. That's it! They are where I saw them last, in the safety and security of what I understand.

Then something like ripping paper startles me, hands vying in vain to catch the clearing smoke and I become confronted with the impossible to process reality of every scene now empty every room now quiet. I keep hopping back and forth between the two worlds over and over until I cry out in exasperation, “WHERE IS MY FAMILY?!“

I thought the depths of my despair had met its threshold in the empty place beside me in bed, that it couldn’t possibly be exceeded. But now, this threshold must grow to include the empty chairs at my table, the empty air, full of silence, the empty beds, so tiny in their room, next to toys left mid-play, frozen in place as if expecting to resume at any time.

“‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.””

‭‭Mark‬ ‭10‬:‭7‬-‭9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

No easier it would be for me to part with my own right arm than to endure the separation from what is truly my own flesh. This sudden amputation has had the most profoundly cruel effect on every aspect of my being.

“So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh”

‭‭Job‬ ‭2‬:‭4‬-‭5‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

I am laid bare. Stripped of all ornament. It has decimated every part of me. I have been leveled, emptied, completely hollowed out.

What has my principled stand gained in the heart of my contender? Has my persuasion purchased any rhetorical grip? Even grit, my ability to suffer long may be my own undoing if I indeed do nothing.

Whatever confidence once held, whatever pride once attributed to my own abilities has fled the battle field and I stand alone to meditate among the dead. The stinking corpses of failed attempts speak to my own flawed and fallen state. “What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true.”

‭‭Job‬ ‭3‬:‭23‬-‭26‬ ‭NLT‬‬

But I remember, my help comes from the Lord! He who speaks to the dead as if they live is surely our salvation! So indeed, from raw knees I bellow out His name again- with my head upturned and eyes squeezed so tight I fear they may burst, His name comes roaring from my mouth for what feels like hours.

My limbs are limp in the aftermath, all strength extinguished.

I am at my end.

I have no more.

A question faintly whispers from somewhere in the back of my head. “Why do you make me look at injustice?”

‭‭Habakkuk‬ ‭1‬:‭3 ‭NIV‬‬

In addition to my other retail job I have since taken up driving for Uber to make ends meet. On one occasion, I pulled in to what happened to be a bar parking lot, mentally battening-down-hatches as the car came to a stop. After bouncing into the back seat, my customer, let’s call him Jon, gregariously managed,

“Hey Boo-Boo! And how-are-you today?”

and like that, we were underway.

As a general rule of thumb, it doesn’t take me long to plunge below surface level pleasantries and behold the beauty of the deep with my fellow man. So, at the proverbial drop of the hat, I gave an off-the-cuff “praise the Lord!” and the conversational race was on.

The immediate rebuff I heard was somewhat under the breath, most certainly blasphemous and now clear that our shared trajectory was that of a descent.

He defiantly asked “you’re not one of those people who believe in original sin are you?”

“Yes sir I do.”

In mortified retort he asked, “how could there be a loving God who places an unpayable debt on people from birth?”

I said “One who is willing to pay that debt with Himself.”

When I was confronted with Jon’s question, it was immediately clear that the answer God placed in my mouth was just as much for me as it was for Jon.

Though God did not create a broken world, my broken world, His response to it makes a way by offering Himself as the way. His presence answers it all.

It always will.

It did then, and it does now.

When the Israelites cried out for deliverance,

His presence split the sea and swallowed enemies,

It consumed Sainai and spoke truth,

and from within the smoke and flame, seated above cherubim, His presence dwelt among His people to be the way.

When Job cried out amidst ash and potsherd, the only answer needed and the only One given, approached from the north in golden splendor.

Gaping mouth now covered, emptied cup now full, Job sat buffeted in the eye of the furiously infinite Most High- His ways definitively and endlessly more high.

And when all of creation cries out in response to the injustice subjected to it,

The Lord Almighty once again descends to offer Himself as the way.

Enthroned in glory, the Son of Heaven leaves gilded halls to imprint upon the dust and ash. To again dwell among His people-

For with out Immanuel, Isaac’s question echos flatly to an unanswered wilderness. Where is the sacrifice?

His presence, Word made flesh was silently lead to yield His blood into final atonement for all. The Perfect Passover Lamb laid down for our offenses.

To be continued...

7/25/25

'For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness' 'but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.'

Romans 4:3, 23-25

Curious thing about this passage I just recently learned: in a sermon by Pastor David Guzik, he makes two distinctions:

1. It reveals an aspect of God our Father's role in salvation: the "Him" we must believe and the "Him" who raised up Jesus our Lord- delivering Jesus up because of our sins, resurrecting Christ because of the perfect and complete atonement made.

2. The word here translated as "delivered up" is the Greek word paredothē (παρεδόθη). This word has a unique connotation of "being arrested," or "handed over with the intent of serving justice."

'For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. '

Romans 5:7-8

For some, a reasonable scenario that may play out in the 'what-if' rehearsals of our minds is that of sacrifice. We would like to think that if put in a position, we would boldly attain a gloriously heroic end to save the life of another.

But what if to save that life it demanded your child's instead?

I can scarcely begin to envision it, yet our Father willing gave up His own Son for us. He paredothē His precious and Only One, knowing what awaited Him, knowing the suffering He would witness- to see one's child in pain. To lose them. It occurs to me then-

He knew what I felt. He knew this.

As sudden as a storm approaching from the north, the presence of the Almighty God descended upon me as my answer- the only One needed and the only One given. Engulfed in a furious whirlwind and surrounded by the warmth of His wings, I still wept, but now I wept for Him.

I wept for His agony; His loss. I wept for being the cause of it and for the beautiful love that gave of Himself anyways.

I envisioned that moment, what He beheld from heaven as the final drops of His cup fell alongside tears from His own eyes. His tears are now my tears; His anguish my own.

Like the notes left floating in the moment after crescendo's end, a hush descends with the darkness, as still as a winter field. Its dominion odiously gloats, laughter cutting the silence after an exhaled “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”

A stone grates into place, sealing defeat, securing dominion. Entombed within, whatever hope of heaven had once been lies shrouded in memory and darkness.

What is there now? Is there no end to this descent into brokeness? To my brokeness?

In the garden I hear my name-

Realization washes over my mind like a horizon finally giving way to the rays of dawn-

I cry out "Rabboni!"

My God always has a plan.

He did then, and He does now.

For He is “the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live' and 'if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.'

John 11:25; Romans 8:11

Therefore, like Abraham, I will 'not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but [will be] strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and [am] fully convinced that what He [has] promised He [is] also able to perform. '

Romans 4:20-21

For “I have seen the Lord!” He has given me the only answer I will ever need and what is truly my portion:

His Presence.