When Tim Timmons showed me his wrist more than 10 years ago, I knew I was in the presence of a man living fully alive.
“Life is always a divine gift we can keep fighting to hold on to – and life can be a deep grief that we can always keep struggling to find our way through.”
Which was not what you’d expect from a man who tells you that he has a form of incurable cancer. That doctors only gave him 5 years to keep opening up his eyes to see a new day, only 1826 days left to keep filling his lungs with glorious oxygen & the wonder of his one miraculous existence on this side.
When you look down at Tim’s wrist, what you see is this scrawled X that he marks every single morning with a black sharpie – like the way you’d mark another day on a calendar….
“Because I woke up again today,” says Tim. “It becomes kind of a gift every morning. I go, ‘Yes! I get to join Jesus another day!’”
I didn’t show Tim my own wrists that day, etched with scars from more than a year or two of cutting as a teen who just didn’t know how to live with the trauma of living.
Life is always a divine gift we can keep fighting to hold on to – and life can be a deep grief that we can always keep struggling to find our way through.
With a finger resting there on that X on his wrist, what Tim says next is about where we all are living our lives:
“Your days aren’t about all the things you have to complete – but about you being soul-well through anything, because you’re living your days in the One who already fully completes you“
“There are 10,080 minutes in a week. 80 of those minutes are generally spent in a church gathering somewhere…. How do we join Jesus in the other 10,000 minutes?”
What if the meaning of our existence was more than accomplishing something with our time – but rather abiding with Someone who rules over time, and has already accomplished all that matters?
What if the reality is:
Your days aren’t about all the things you have to complete – but about you being soul-well through anything, because you’re living your days in the One who already fully completes you?
What if:
You don’t have to feel pulled in a million directions –
You get to be joined, and live fully in union with the One who is the Way Himself.
When I cross paths with Tim over a decade later, on the night of this movie premier, “I Can Only Imagine 2”, that gives a glimpse into Tim’s life-transforming story, he still has that daily X marked on his wrist.
“Only the cross lives at the intersection of both our deepest griefs, and our deepest gratitudes, to show us the Way toward the full life.“
And hadn’t I, for more than a decade now too, picked up a black pen, and kind of ridiculously desperate to remember the union, the communion—written it on my wrist and let the ink bleed a bit like a vow right there over scarred skin:
One little black cross.
Only the God who takes all of our loss and grief to the cross can give us the gift of solidarity in suffering.
Only the cross lives at the intersection of both our deepest griefs, and our deepest gratitudes — to show us the Way toward the full life.
Only when we see everyday how our griefs are wholly answered at the cross, can we boldly live our days with unquestionable gratitude.
Even before I walk in to watch “I Can Only Imagine 2,” I’m in awe — God’s given Tim Timmons 5 times the number of years the doctors had predicted — just shy of 25 years since his diagnosis — and just over 9000 days. More than 9000 days of marking his wrist, of claiming the amazing grace of this day — unmerited gift.
“When you mark your days and time — you start to wake to the fact that you don’t ultimately need more time — what you need is to experience more joy in the time you’re gifted.“
And as I watch the movie — watch Tim cough blood up over a sink as he fights through cancer, as I watch his best friend, Bart Millard, navigate the daily life-and-death battle of Type 1 diabetes with his son — a story we know painfully too well with our own son — it strikes me like a blazing bolt of amazing grace:
What if God doesn’t have to take away our situation, for us to still take joy, because our greatest joy is that He still takes us?
Though nothing may seem well in our situation, when Jesus is our well within that quenches & satisfies — then it’s always well with our souls.
In a brave, deeply moving scene on the screen, Tim marks his wrist for another miraculous, unmerited day, and there in my theater seat, I trace the cross marked on my own wrist, a call to a cruciform life, to live at the intersection of grateful communion — and I blink it back:
Though nothing may seem well in our situation, when Jesus is our well within that quenches & satisfies — then it’s always well with our souls.
When you mark your days and time — you start to wake to the fact that you don’t ultimately need more time — what you need is to experience more joy in the time you’re gifted.
Even if all we long for never happens — the joy in every moment is that we get to belong to Him.
And by the last scene, when Tim’s smiling as Bart Millard of MercyMe starts to sing “Even If…. It is well with my soul…” everything brims & blurs a bit happy and profoundly clear to me:
Our soul is always well, because in all our moments, it’s home to the One who is the Well of Life.
This Lent, This Resurrection Season, Go See: I Can Only Imagine 2
