An Everyday Peacemaker Story by Matt Willingham
“I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that Jesus’ resurrected body had scars…why is that? Why didn’t he come out of the tomb with a pristine, unblemished body?”
Everyday Peacemaker Lin Elizabeth is a hospital chaplain and artist who is thinking a lot about scars and loss these days.
“When I realized I was losing my hearing, I felt helpless,” Lin recalled. “Comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable’ is kind of my life motto, but how can I do my work if I can’t hear what people are saying?”
As an artist, Lin ‘disturbs the comfortable’ by creating pieces that promote exploration and understanding. As a chaplain, Lin ‘comforts the disturbed’ by visiting the hospital rooms of strangers, often in their heaviest moments.
“Early on in the hearing loss, I was just frustrated and felt the loss of control, but eventually I got enough perspective to ask, ‘What do I still have to offer to people around me?’ and I began to realize the opportunity I still had amidst my vulnerability. In fact, I began realizing my hearing loss could actually help me in my work. These ‘scars’ don’t have to be hidden, erased, or wasted.”
Lin felt the God of comfort show up for her in her disturbed state, and she remembered that she is Beloved. She continued:
“My hearing isn’t really resolved, but dealing with this helped me realize more deeply that I am Beloved, made by a Creator who says YES to who I am way down to my core. God wants me to thrive in my Belovedness, because even when I lose things very dear to me like my hearing, all is not lost—I am not lost.”
So why did Jesus’s resurrected body carry scars?
“Because our scars are a marker of God’s grace in our own lived story,” Lin said with a smile. “They’re a reminder of our own Belovedness and that the wounds of lost hearing are an opportunity to draw closer in trust. Our belovedness isn’t a space I make or earn, it is a place of rest and refuge that is always there.”
Today, Lin still works as an artist and chaplain. She asks permission to sit close to the patients’ hospital beds so she can hear them. Her vulnerable admission is often comforting to patients and enhances her work as a comforter.
She comforts because she knows a Comforter.
She listens because, in her loss, she’s been heard.
She is absolutely Beloved, and may you see that you are, too.
Lin Elizabeth is an Everyday Peacemaker, working as a hospital chaplain, theological artist, mother, daughter, wife, sister and neighbor in predominately white spaces. She spends her life looking for ways to foster Jesus’ conspiracy of love and healing for all here on earth.