Keep Up With Me

Yesterday, before I left my grandfather’s hospital room, he looked up at me and said, “Keep up with me.” He meant it practically. He knew they would probably transfer him to a rehab hospital soon, and he wanted to make sure I knew where he went.

“Keep up with me.”

I assured him I would. What he doesn’t remember is that less than twenty-four hours earlier, I had been trying desperately to do exactly that. A scary health situation unfolded and I quickly figured out care for Jack, drove 80 miles, and arrived to get up close and tell him to “Take a strain.”

It is an expression he has used on me my entire life. When I was a child and getting worked up, Pepa would admonish me to “take a strain.” He still says it to me as an adult. Saturday, I gave it back to him. Stop fighting the mask on your face and breathe.

Then came Sunday. Sunday, I relieved a family member and walked into his room and found a man on room air, yelling commentary at the golfers on television while scrolling Facebook Marketplace looking for his next project.

And when I got ready to leave:

“Keep up with me.”

Oh, I’m trying. I’m trying to keep up with a lot of things right now. Then Pepa landed in the hospital 80 miles away. So I did what women do every day. I kept moving pieces around. I cared for one person and found people I trusted to help care for another.

I kept up.

Sunday evening, after leaving the hospital, I stopped for Mass before going to the grocery store. I was 80 miles from home, in a church where nobody knew me or what my week had looked like.

The processional hymn began. How Great Thou Art. I opened the hymnal out of habit. Then I closed it. I didn’t need it. Those words are written on my heart. So I closed my eyes, whispered words I have known for most of my life, and wept anonymously among strangers.

And for a little while, nobody needed me to keep up with anything. I allowed my body and mind the respite of the rhythm of the Mass.

Then Scripture began. Jeremiah was weary. He described God’s word as something like a fire burning inside him, something he could no longer hold in. The Psalmist cried, “My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.” Paul urged the Romans to offer their very bodies as a living sacrifice and to be transformed by the renewal of their minds.

And then came Peter. Jesus told His disciples what awaited Him in Jerusalem: suffering, death, and resurrection. Peter objected. I understand Peter.

We want a Messiah. We just don’t particularly want the Cross. We want resurrection. We would strongly prefer to negotiate the part that comes before it. We want holiness, but if possible, we would like God to accomplish it without allowing anything to hurt very much.

Jesus doesn’t offer Peter that version of discipleship.

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

And then the priest said something I wrote down and boxed:

The goal isn’t comfort. The goal is holiness.

Well. There it was. There it is.

We live in a time that is remarkably good at avoiding discomfort. If something is inconvenient, change it. If it asks too much of us, find an easier version. If we don’t like it, move along to something we do. And if we aren’t careful, we can begin treating Christianity the same way. Like a buffet. I’ll take mercy, but maybe leave repentance. Resurrection, absolutely, but I’d rather pass on the Cross. Give me the parts that affirm what I already want, and I’ll quietly leave behind the ones that ask me to change.

Except that isn’t discipleship.

We aren’t supposed to make our faith fit us. Our faith is supposed to transform us.

Paul had just told me exactly that: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

That transformation reaches even our desires. Our desires have to be disciplined. Our loves have to be reordered. We have to learn to want Christ more than we want our own comfort. And that is difficult in a world constantly telling us that whatever we want most must therefore be what is best for us.

The Gospel tells us something different. The closer the apostles got to Christ, the more they denied themselves. They left nets and boats and livelihoods. They surrendered their own ideas of who the Messiah should be and what following Him should look like. Eventually, most would surrender their very lives.

Proximity to Jesus did not make their lives increasingly comfortable. It made them increasingly His.

And that is the part we would rather skip. Lasting growth requires sacrifice. It stretches us. It is uncomfortable. But the product of that stretching can become our joy; not because suffering itself is good, but because becoming more like Christ is.

Which brings me back to the week I had just lived. This was not an explanation for it. I don’t believe God allowed my grandfather another hospitalization to teach me a lesson. I don’t believe Jack struggles so that his mother can become holy. The people I love are not object lessons in my spiritual formation.

And wanting relief is not a failure of faith. I wanted Jack’s world to settle down. I wanted Pepa to breathe. I wanted my phone to stop ringing. I wanted everybody I love to be okay. I wanted my own body to stop behaving as though something terrible were about to happen.

I wanted rest.

I still do.

Those aren’t bad desires. But Christianity makes an astonishing claim about the suffering that inevitably finds us anyway:

none of it has to be wasted.

The Cross changed that. Christ did not stand at a safe distance from human suffering and explain it. He entered it. And He asks us to follow Him. Not to enjoy suffering. Not to manufacture it. Not to call evil good or exhaustion virtuous.

To follow.

I think that is why Pepa’s words have stayed with me.

“Keep up with me.”

Because I have spent days trying desperately to keep up:

Keep up with Jack.

Keep up with Pepa.

Keep up with work.

Keep up with the doctors and therapists and an educational team and messages and responsibilities and people I love.

Keep up with my own body when it finally says, Enough.

I even tried to keep up at the grocery store after Mass. I love HEB and needed groceries. I wanted a prepared stuffed salmon and fresh green beans to throw in the oven. I wanted good iced coffee for the refrigerator. Ok, that was a neccesity since I woke Sunday morning to zero coffee in my home.

That grocery run really almost did me in. The Sunday-evening crowd, carts everywhere, people everywhere, noise everywhere, and suddenly my body seemed to decide that one more stimulus was one too many. I truly thought about ditching the basket and trotting out of the store. A panic attack was welling in my chest, and it's been a long while since one of those inconveniently presented itself. And maybe there, of all places, was the distinction I needed to understand.

Jesus did not say, “Take up everybody’s crosses and keep all of this from falling apart.”

He said: Take up your cross and follow me.

Follow.

Not control.

Not prevent every bad outcome.

Not carry every person I love.

Not keep the BiPAP on by the force of my will.

Not make everything okay for Jack.

Not know what tomorrow brings for Pepa.

Follow.

After a week of telling everyone else what needed to happen, I needed to sit anonymously among strangers, close my hymnal, close my eyes, and remember Who was actually leading.

The invitation isn’t:

Keep up with everything.

It is simply:

Keep up with Me.

And when I cannot, when I am bone tired and overstimulated and standing in a grocery store wondering if my nervous system has finally reached its limit, the Psalm from yesterday gives me an even better answer:

“My soul clings fast to you;

your right hand upholds me.”

There it is.

I thought I was doing all the holding.

Turns out, I am the one being held.