Now as Peter went here and there among all the brothers and sisters, he came down also to the saints living in Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years, for he was paralyzed. Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; get up and make your bed!” And immediately he got up. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord. 

— Acts 9:32-35

I am not Aeneas. And the physician who implanted my generator to address eight years of Parkinson’s disease did not claim to be Jesus. Nor was I cured. But I have been healed. 

The deepest healing occurred before the surgeon implanted the deep-brain-stimulation pulse generator just below my collarbone earlier this year. 

The healer of that pain and of those wounds was indeed Jesus. Because the deepest work God wants to do in us is always internal.

In the healing that I have experienced, I can identify with the story of Reynolds Price. A professor and poet at Duke University, Price lived a life that no one would define as saintly. But he could never quite get away from his belief in Jesus. 

Or, perhaps, Jesus never stopped believing in Reynolds Price. 

Whatever the case, Price encountered a terminal illness, with no hope for a cure.

As he struggled with this news, he experienced something remarkable. Jesus met him on the Sea of Galilee and said, “Your sins are forgiven.” 

Shocked by the encounter, Price responded, “But Lord, what about this illness?” 

Jesus replied, “Oh, that too.” 

And he disappeared.

Price refused to call his encounter with Jesus a ­vision. It was more real to him than that.

As I write this, we are spending our annual time at the beach. It’s a retreat that has always been a marker in my life, a time to take stock of where I am and where I’m going. 

Thirty years ago, I began to assess my year of teaching. Then I added pastoral ministry. And then my symptoms of Parkinson’s, which every year became worse. 

With Parkinson’s, it was like the markers for growth in reverse. Ever downhill. I struggled harder to keep up, and my tremors became ever more severe. I saw no reason to hope for improvement. 

But, like Price, I experienced God’s love and grace in the midst of suffering. Grace that I had to hang on to for life and limb, with every ounce of my strength. Some days, I wasn’t sure I could.

This year, the tremors have mostly stopped. I am keeping up. I see a new future. 

Still, as I approach the age of 60, I have no illusions about whether I will shake again someday without any hope of stillness. 

Price remained paralyzed but was a better and more prolific writer than ever. Twenty years later, he died. So did Aeneas, and so will I. 

I don’t know how many years I will have to make my annual life assessment, but I do know this: If I had been born a century earlier, or born into poverty, or with a set of symptoms that prevented me from being a candidate for deep brain stimulation, I would still be tremoring and trying to keep up. 

And yet, I receive this temporary relief as a gift from Jesus, to whom I will always give thanks. 

And someday, the three of us — Aeneas, Reynolds Price and I — along with all who have met Jesus (or whom Jesus mysteriously met in one way or another), will gather and give thanks for both the temporary reprieve and the eternal joy.