Abstract: Christ’s voluntary subjection to the horrible realities of this world transformed him forever. His vulnerability became his capacity to save and heal all humankind. Our own suffering develops our capacity for love, which is the power that makes us useful to others, and humility, which is the root of wisdom.

During chemotherapy, I live my life in fourteen-day cycles. On Day 1, I check myself into the infusion center. The nurse punches a needle into my chest. It connects to a catheter that dumps directly into a large vein in my neck. They hook me up to my life-saving poison. For the first hours, I type briskly on my computer. Then I start to feel the effects. Waves of nausea sweep over me. My vision feels thick. They flush my line with saline, filling my mouth with a metallic taste, then hook me up to a pump worn around my waist. It’s like being pregnant with a laptop. My family members take me home, where I lie under blankets, watching episodes of the Great British Baking Show until it is time for everyone to go to sleep. But it’s hard to sleep. I keep waking up, groping for the vomit bag in the darkness. My husband snores peacefully at my side. I am alone.

To elude the nausea, I imagine myself in one of my favorite places in the world, a place that now seems to belong to another lifetime. I am walking along a trail of deep, fine, black sand. The children and the dog bound joyfully ahead, tearing up and down the steep dunes on either side, hiding behind clumps of grass, leaping out with shrieks of delight. The trail opens up onto the windswept expanse of Te Henga, a wild beach on the west coast of Auckland. Waves from the Tasman Sea rise, crash, and line the sand with a layer of reflected light and sea foam. With their toes, the children sweep patterns into the shining sand. The wind rushes off the sea, blowing the tops off the breakers. Every once in [Page 224]a while, a large wave rushes up unexpectedly, flooding the beach with water and chasing us to higher ground.

On Day 2 of the chemo cycle, I awake still nauseated, still connected to the pump, the needle still in my chest. Every seven breaths, the pump squirts out a bit more therapeutic poison. At midday, I tentatively eat mouthfuls of soup, vomit bag at hand. I feel some strength come back into my body. On Day 3, I awake and enjoy lying in bed. I listen to the hustle of the household as everyone gathers their things and rushes off to school. When the house is quiet again, I emerge and eat some of the miso soup with rice my husband has made and left on the stovetop. It is warm and salty. In the afternoon, I go to the infusion center and get “unplugged” from my pump. In the evening, I take a nice hot shower.

On Days 1 and 2, as I pass through that deep valley, I wonder whether Christ despaired in his suffering and wished it had never come to him. Did his moral perfection and divine knowledge insulate him from discouragement? Was he able to float grandly above the fray, detached from his body’s hurts and wants, observing frailty but not subjected to it? I remember he “felt exceedingly heavy”1 and prayed, “Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me.”2 I remember he “shrank not to drink the bitter cup”3 but wonder if he found it unbearably bitter. Did he ever think, “I can’t do this,” or “I don’t know how long I can keep this up...