Living In The Solution

or The difference between a transformed life and a Transforming Life

Does our life magically change in one dramatic “Come to Jesus” moment, or does Jesus himself seem to suggest a different way of thinking about our healing.

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

Ten Healed of Leprosy

¹¹ As Jesus continued on toward Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria. ¹² As he entered a village there, ten men with leprosy stood at a distance, ¹³ crying out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

¹⁴ He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.”^[a] And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy.

¹⁵ One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, “Praise God!” ¹⁶ He fell to the ground at Jesus’ feet, thanking him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan.

¹⁷ Jesus asked, “Didn’t I heal ten men? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸ Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹ And Jesus said to the man, “Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.^[b]”

Warts and All

I have a wart on my foot. It’s horrible.

It’s called a plantar’s wart, which is basically just a wart that’s on your foot, usually on the bottom. Because it’s on the bottom of your foot, it doesn’t stick out the way a wart on your hand might, it sort of gets squished into your skin and is flush with the bottom of your foot.

Like I said, it’s horrible.

I’ve had this wart for as long as I have been consciously looking at the bottom of my feet. This started when I first began my yoga practice like twelve years ago. In traditional Enneagram 8, self-prez-blind fashion, I just ignored it. It wasn’t until I noticed a second wart forming that I decided to do some research on plantar’s warts and I was horrified at what I found. I am so serious, y’all, do not google it.

It’s horrible.

After this harrowing search engine experience I decided I needed to finally address this malady. I ordered a slew of products to help me get rid of the warts on the bottom of my foot before my entire left foot was taken over. I’ve seen over the counter remedies for warts that will freeze the wart off, and I know some dermatologists will cut them off as well. But you can’t use the freezy things on a plantar’s wart for whatever reason (probably because it doesn’t stick out) and I was left to get a liquid that I applied to my foot to kill the wart.

I was hopeful until I started reading the directions. My heart dropped. I was supposed to apply this special kind of acid on my foot twice a day for TWELVE WEEKS. Are you kidding me?! THREE WHOLE MONTHS?!

I had really hoped I would be able to do maybe a week’s worth of applications tops before my foot was back ready for beach season or god forbid the day I have to sell feet pics on OnlyFans.

I decided to try and make it a quick fix anyway. I applied extra and made sure to scrub and pumice my foot extra, and removed the excess skin that was dying away. And at first it seemed like it was working. A few days in I could barely walk because of the wound I created on the bottom of my foot (please, please, PLEASE, no one do this. This is a very dumb thing I did). But even after I thought it was over, a few weeks later the wart came back and looked weirder than ever.

The Quick Fix approach didn’t work.

12 Step Wisdom

There is an idea in the 12 Step traditions that is boiled down to: “You have to live in the solution.”

For lots of folks who first come to a 12 step program, there can be an extreme desire to find the quick, or at least quickest, fix for their problem. And who can blame them? If you’re in a position to see out that kind of support, life has probably gotten hard enough that wanting a quick fix feels pretty reasonable. Lots of folks even feel an immense and often immediate relief stepping into a 12 step meeting for the first time. It sometimes feels like a quick fix for folks.

But anyone who’s been in recovery for an sizeable amount of time knows otherwise.

In order for the program to work, you have to work it. And not just once, but continually. This is what they mean by “living in the solution.” You can’t make a problem out of your life if you continue to live in the solution.

I think this is what Jesus was getting at with these men he healed.

A Spiritual Disease

In the 12 Steps they call addiction a Spiritual Disease with a Spiritual Solution. I think in many ways, as we look at how leprosy is used throughout biblical writing, we could say the same thing about it.

Those ten men were exiled, cut off from relationship and community, because of their disease, and Jesus offered them a way back to a healed life. Not just in the physical sense, but in the communal sense as well. Addiction does the same thing, destroying relationships and cutting us off from what we need to live a fulfilled life, and the 12 Steps has offered countless people a way back into the meaningful and fulfilled life addiction took from them.

But this healing doesn’t happen just once. It has to happen everyday, to borrow yet another 12 step phase, one day at a time.

Nine of those men dove back into their lives after being healed. They took the quick fix and moved on. And who knows, maybe they were fine after that, but Jesus seems to be saying to the samaritan man that his willingness to stay focused on what (or in this case who) healed him offered him something more. The last line, “Your faith has healed you,” seems to suggest that this man is now experiencing a healing beyond what the other nine experienced.

Transformed vs Transforming

I think in many ways we all want a quick fix. We all want to know that we’ve arrived. That we’ve accomplished something. That we’re healed. Full stop.

This is the desire at the heart of substitutional atonement theory. Jesus died so we could be saved from our sins once and forever. We just have to say a prayer and BOOM, we’re saved.

Growing up in the evangelical church it was all about “accepting Jesus as your lord and savior.” Once you did that, you could be sure you were headed to heaven after you died. Cool. Checked that box, now let’s move on.

But that theology bears bad fruit.

And as someone who has literally been baptized three different times (because how can you be sure it worked the first two times?!) it does nothing to assuage the existential fear and anxiety of being a human on this planet.

Yes, we all want to be transformed, but the only thing that will satisfy our weary souls is to be continually transforming.

Living in the solution means that we are taking those small steps every day. We are orienting ourselves over and over towards what is healing us. For some folks that means going to meetings and working the steps to stay sober. For others it means stopping the doom scroll and connecting meaningfully with friends and family instead. But for all of us it means cultivating gratitude for the blessings of our lives.

Bandaids on My Foot

I’m now three weeks into the not-so-quick fix of plantar wart removal. For as strange as it may sound, this stupid, gross wart on my foot has been a wonderful teacher of how to live in the solution. And I’m grateful for the fact that the smaller ones are nearly gone completely, and the original is visibly smaller as well.

And the gratitude keeps me going.

Good Lord I can’t believe I wrote an entire article about a wart on my foot.