The Great Compensator: Like it or not…making me this way pleased God.
The heart surgeon said I compensated beautifully. The referring cardiologist agreed. They exchanged some medical jargon, discussing the battery of tests and nodded in agreement. The test results pleased them. All I could say is …now what? More always follows.
In the early 1960’s, during the dark ages of open heart surgery, I had a Tetralogy of Fallot repair. I was in the Cleveland Clinic Hospital for 2 months and survived two open-heart surgeries. After the first surgery, I contracted a staph infection, then pneumonia, and then what they called “drug fever”. All medications were taken away and a second surgery was necessary. By some miracle, I lived to talk about it!
Post-tramatic-stress-disorder is something a lot of people face for different reasons. I’m afraid of appointments for “check-ups” like I described. When the doctors were sharing their final diagnosis, I didn’t want to hear the inevitable. I just wanted to plug my ears and chant la-la-la-la…
My whole life, I’ve lived with this can of worms in my chest. It’s been nothing but problems… every time a cardiologist examines me. The doctor remind me of a bird hunting for worms. The cold stethoscope hops around on my bare chest, while the doc is busy listening, cocking their head from side to side. The bird stops to listen, then goes on hunting in another spot, intent on finding a worm…a sound that will make them dig further.
No matter how still I lay, I know they’ll find the worms. This cardiologist, with very little expression, simply said that my heart appeared “to compensate very well”. I wasn’t terribly happy to hear this, because I felt ambivalent. I was on the verge of being kind of… pathetic. Compensating was an unfair a label of mediocrity!
This heart problem is a hidden disability. Most people don’t realize I have an unnaturally deformed heart that is hidden inside me, doing its very best to keep me alive. I’ve always looked physically able and healthy, so it’s been easy to pass as better than average. Besides that, I have high personal expectations, so the reality of having a disability isn’t easy to accept. When surgery became a distant memory, I had become rebellious. I liked living on the edge. I could do anything anyone else could do!
The problem with refusing to accept the truth is…. it makes it easier to listen to lies. I followed the whispers inside my head that told me that God had been unfair to make me this way. These lies caused me question God’s love, and even blame God! After all, He dealt me this bad hand in life!
Coping with a birth defect has been no small thing! My physical challenges meant a lifetime of not being able to compete in sports. Learning to be content was a daily test. Ultimately, acceptance demanded a leap of faith. I needed to open my arms and embrace my disability. Acceptance meant receiving this gift of life, that God had give to me as the miracle it is… with the imperfections that a perfect God chose to give me. I had to accept the way God made me, rather than bitterly rue the way I wish I would have been made. I had to learn to be content.
For a long time, my ego obstinately told me, just because I had to live with this shortcoming didn’t mean I had to like it. But by refusing to embrace the truth, I was rejecting the peace God offers. The emptiness was like a huge chasm that needed to be filled. I searched for something, anything, to fill that empty hole. Fortunately, as I searched, God led me to learn to love and accept myself the way He had made me. This meant accepting the truth, or the reality of my disability. When I embraced the truth, I found peace with God.
There is a saying, “The truth will set you free”. Trusting God takes a leap of faith. A while back, a pastor drew a picture that showed me the importance of Christ. In the picture of the cross, he explained that the horizontal beam of the cross is like a bridge. On one side is our inherit sinfulness, while the other side is God’s holiness. The vertical beam, intersecting the bridge, shows how low a high God will stoop to reach down to man. This is how much God loves us! It’s why He sent His Son to be our advocate. Jesus came to teach us how to make peace with God. On the cross, Jesus died to fill the emptiness in my heart, to heal the spiritual hole in my heart and make me whole!
Until this hole in my heart healed, trying to make sense of why God allowed such a “huge mistake” in me, left me feeling cheated. I lived each day with a self-loathing and bitterness towards the long “zipper” down the middle of my chest. This bitterness festered as long as I refused to accept the inimitable way God had made me. God says, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up….” (Hebrews 12:15) Once the ugly root of bitterness begins to grow, it is a hard thing to get rid of.
Acceptance goes hand-in-hand with surrendering. Surrendering to God is the only way to gain victory over bitterness. Some things we simply cannot change, but we can change the way we see ourselves. In time, our hearts can accept the truth, overcome the lies, and let us see the good God has done. Years of whining why me, led nowhere until the notion struck me… it was a wonder that God chose to make me at all! Evidently, God has a special plan for me, my disability was really a gift of life! Over time, I’ve discovered amazing “coincidences” relating to my heart repairs that have turned my “luck” into life!
Now it makes perfect sense, because “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”! (Psalm 139:15) Learning that my heart has compensated very well now fills me with hope! At the follow-up appointment, a heart surgeon said that I would not need a pulmonary valve replacement at this time. He smiled and restated, “She compensates beautifully, so we can wait. That moment still resonates!
Fifty years later, and after getting a new pulmonary valve, I understand the beauty of simply compensating! With God’s grace, I am able to show real gratitude, pay it forward, and express that being alive is enough. There is satisfaction in merely compensating! But, this new level of grace required me to overcome my bitterness. To accept my limitations. And to stop competing for my spot in the foot races of life. I am comfortable knowing that I have not been disqualified…especially in God’s eyes!
I know that God has marvelous plans for me, for all of us! He alone is able to compensate for our weaknesses because his grace is made perfect in weakness. His grace is sufficient for you and me. Simply accept the truth…God is The Great Compensator! With Him we have enough. He alone is sufficient! (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
Written in February 1994, and rewritten, and rewritten…