We all have a few memories that are indelibly carved into
our consciousness. Most memories tend to
be mutable and change over time, but there are a few that are fixed in
everyone’s memory. We remember what we
were wearing, the weather outside, the ambient sounds, the smell in the air and
even the thoughts that were running through our heads.
Most of those memories for me are really rather
insignificant ones. I remember a perfect
run on corn snow in march at Mary Jane, the breeze, the sound of my skies on
the little kernals of refrozen snow, the collar of my jacket being slightly
damp with sweat and the odd stiffness of an old school powerbar in my inside
pocket as I carved wide GS turns from the top of Parsenn Bowl, all the way down
to the lift line corral at the base while listening to Jimmy Smith play a live
version of Sag Shootin’ His Arrow through not entirely comfortable ear buds
stuffed under the ear flaps of my helmet.
And I remember a particular few minutes of a night between college and
real life where my best friend and I paused by the river on the Southside of Pittsburgh
after driving down a road simply because we had driven past it for years and
never knew what was down it. We got out
and walked down to a disused boat launch, the ripples from the wake of a
passing barge were gently lapping against the old concrete boat ramp, the
voices of tipsy girls arguing about where their car was parked drifting in the
air and that unmistakable Ohio River scent filling my nostrils.
But there is one important memory burned like that into
my brain. It was a Thursday Afternoon,
and I was missing my 1:00 theology class, I was wearing a blue brown and sage
tie with a repeating pattern of water color paintings of a tree on it and a
brown gingham check shirt with an oxford color, sage green pants and brown buck
oxfords that were well past their prime in the way seminary student’s shoes
usually are, and my wife was sitting next to me on the kind of barely
upholstered chair that you only seem to find in doctors’ offices. Two feet away
a man with a very thoughtful look on his face sandwiched between a white shirt
with a too wide tie and a yarmulke held on with two bobby pins was seated on a
stool with a rotating seat and pointing to MRI films of my wife’s brain. And although I was hanging on every word, my
mind kept drifting to the thought that this is a scene that only happens in
movies, or maybe “a very special episode” of a network TV show, not in real
life. Not in my real life.
But it was and what he was telling us, was that my wife
had MS. To be honest, it was not much of
a surprise, I had a feeling in my gut a year prior when an orthopedist said that
all of her symptoms were not coming from an injured disk in her back, and it
was something of a relief too, she had been inexplicably suffering for so long,
and had been given so many small diagnoses over the years that it was a relief
to know there was a central cause and that we could develop a plan of
treatment. But it still seemed incredibly
surreal. Our day to day life wasn’t
changing, but now we had this label.
And what a label it is.
Let’s be honest up until that moment MS was something you had walkathons
for in middle school and nodded sympathetically about when it was mentioned in
conversation. It wasn’t something your
wife has. But it is something my wife
has, and it is not well controlled because her diagnosis came so late (more on
that later) and it is now part of our daily life. And as believers, we know that it is part of
our daily life because that was God’s sovereign plan for us. That it is for His glory and for our good and
that we are called to be content in every circumstance, even when your family
is deeply affected my multiple sclerosis.
That is the theological truth of our situation; I believe
all of those things unwaveringly. But I
am also at times reminded of a favorite biblical counseling professor, who if
he was having a rough day, and you asked him how it was going he would always
reply, I’m trying to make my theology work for me today. Well that is what this blog is going to be
about, making good theology work for you, when suffering is a constant part of
your marriage.
One of the great frustrations I had, being a bookish sort
of guy, was that there are virtually no resources available that address how to
be a godly husband when your wife suffers greatly on a daily basis. So I (and we) are engaged in the ongoing
process of discovering to make my theology work for me, as I seek to be a godly
husband in a situation that no one is truly prepared for, and to love my wife
who is the greatest gift, save my salvation, that God has ever given me. I humbly invite you the reader to come along
with me as God works in my life and my marriage to mold me into the man He
would have me be, and I strive every day to love my wife as Jesus loved the
church.
