The Love of Jesus, Follow-up, & Rebecca's Process

April 12, 2006
Our Dear Friends,
Thank you all for your prayers. We have been wonderfully flooded by cards, visits, phone calls, & emails. We are greatly encouraged by your sacrifice for our sake. From all of the correspondence this trial has brought us, we can relate to Paul’s reflections of his friends at the church in Thessalonica: “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). We want to encourage you that the Lord Jesus Christ has used your prayers to keep us pressing on during the difficulties of these last months. Thank you for bearing with us our burdens. We have come to know the love of Jesus better thru His people’s serving us in our time of need. Thank you all for the part that you have played in this.

At the follow-up doctor visit on March 13, the doctor confirmed that I have Dermatomyositis, meaning that my immune system has been attacking my muscles for at least a year, mistaking them for an infection. This caused inflammation, muscle wasting, fatigue, and an increasingly weakened skeletal-muscular system (I lost 25 lbs in the hips, thighs, upper arms, top part of back, shoulder & neck areas). My wife Rebecca helps me during any weight transfers (especially from sitting to standing), and also with movement (I use a wheelchair when going out for energy conservation & a walker when in the apartment). She helps me to shower as well as making meals, doing housework, & assisting me to the bathroom. I require a nap or two a day to maintain the daily activities of doing Greek, taking care of finances, maintaining physical therapy, reading, & living.

I stood up from the bed by myself last week! Though I still fatigue quickly, this is definitely an improvement and an encouragement since I have not been able to do it even once since last semester. Also, the muscle breakdown level in my blood (CPK) has held for the last three weeks at 2400 (down from 4700 when I left the hospital Feb. 10), which allowed me to start easing off of my Prednizone. Continue to pray for strength in Greek studies, school reading, & therapy (for Chris); and strength in Rebecca’s balancing of all her responsibilities of job (she is a Consultant for a software company- something she is able to do from home), housework, meals, & independent study.

We thought it might be helpful in this update for you to hear from Rebecca’s perspective (this is part of an email written to her parents a few weeks ago) on the last months of our journey together:

“I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever be bold enough to let my heart begin to process all that has passed in our lives these past months. It's the grace that is so overwhelming. What does one do with such a heap of pardons as we have received? We certainly can't be expected now to live as we would have before, and I feel a burden of obligation (as if I should not have already felt this toward Christ). Isn't this a strange reaction?

I married Christopher prepared, so I thought, for a husband with muscular dystrophy. . .prepared for a slow digression, for years of wheelchairs, ramps, and theological answers to suffering which we may possibly find ourselves writing books about someday (as if there is some plain answer, and as if there is a lack of those sort of books out there). My mind has been so set upon how we might live life with this challenge as fully and faithfully as possible. I came into the marriage with exuberance. I could hardly wait to face these challenges with my new husband. I knew our dedication to God, and our love for each other would assure joy (not happiness, perhaps, but the joy of His faithfulness certainly) in whatever circumstance.

However, life as a caretaker requires more character of a person than I once thought, character I was certain was in me, but all I have discovered in this is that none of that character is in me, and that the secret to serving where and how God desires for us to serve (which is in a manner patterned after Christ, of course) requires nothing less than utter dependency upon Christ. It is quite another thing to live dependency than to simply desire it, and I am convinced that the only thing that can possibly cause one to live in utter dependency upon Christ is to need it desperately, and that need (which everyone has) can only be realized through suffering, and suffering is a gift only God has the prerogative to bestow, or rather, as we see in Job, to allow to be bestowed. Suffering is really just the removal of what is valuable or needed to a person. We need air, food, clothing, shelter, health. These are physical needs. We need relationships that are healthy, not abusive. These are emotional needs etc. It seems the desire to fight to have my own needs met in all of this has been my most trying enemy in the quest to depend upon Christ to meet my needs, as well as my husband’s.

All that has been taken away from the two of us is Christopher's ability move, which has taken away his ability to do school or work or play as he would like. This has, in turn, taken away my freedom to do those things as well, and has added many physical tasks to my plate that would not have been required of me before. These circumstances have put us in the position to have no income at the moment.(Rebecca just started her job a few weeks ago.) This is all that has really happened. So much more could have been taken away. Besides that, our financial situation has been incredibly cushioned with over $6,000 just within the past two months given to us by our church family, and our unbelieving friends alike. This does not include the much larger support provided us by our families. In the last month, we received permission to use food stamps, and Medicaid. We also learned that there would be an end to this "suffering". I now begin to try to piece together how the temporary removal of my husband's health could rock our boat so severely. How little must I have trusted God before? What would our reaction be if we like Job, had our families been taken away, had our very friends blamed our situation upon our personal sin, and our spouse encouraged us to "curse God and die"?

As is, I have needed not only God, but the grace of His provisions in family and friends in order to praise Him as I do now. How I long to be like Job, to say as a result of hardship "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you", and like Paul in his suffering to say "I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content." To see that the integrity of our presumed character lies unchanged in the midst of the storm has been true in only one sense, and that is that each of us has not failed to go to our knees in our time of need. We have argued. We have seen the worst of one another. This seems hardly the case with Job, who said, "I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go; my heart does not reproach me for days" in response to his friends’ accusations upon his character. Christopher and I are constantly confessing our sinful responses to God and to one another. How gracious is our Father in His forgiveness of us, and of His patience to mold our characters in such a determined manner as to allow us to learn in this suffering and to do it together. Job did later say of his former proclamations, "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know". When I speak of what God is doing here it is certainly speaking of "what I do not understand". It seems God has called me to be silent, to be one who learns, and, as God challenged Job, to "dress myself for action" so as to be prepared to answer when asked: “who is the One in control of all these things?”

So, here I am, only beginning to become comfortable in the midst of the terribly uncomfortable, only beginning to allow Christ alone to be my comfort. Then, everything changes. Things look like they're on the "up." But, I don't feel the certainty that is supposed to be attached to the word "diagnosis". My hope doesn't rest on what the doctor assures us will take place in my beloved husband. I praise God for this diagnosis, and the prognosis. I praise Him for the excitement of watching Christopher actually gain strength. My eyes behold nothing less than the awesome grace of God. Yet, if the situation were to change and be on the "down" again, we would not be out of this grace. God's love is certain whatever the circumstance. Perhaps it takes all of this to have happened to be able to say that in faith. It is a treasure to proclaim this together, Chris and I. We are a small choir. I could not have hoped for a greater treasure, not in many years of marriage, than to know God alongside my husband in this way.”

Much love & thankfulness,
Christopher & Rebecca