Life is Struggle

As I sit here in the pre-dawn minutes of December 27, 2016 with my favorite coffee mug and a quiet house, I am getting a few minutes to think – something that seems rare for me these days.  The last seven years since Brad was diagnosed with leukemia have brought a range of life events I never anticipated.  I never dreamed we would deal with our child being at the brink of death so many times.  I never anticipated our entire life in many ways would revolve around this unwelcome illness.  We learned to be extremely grateful just to be out of a hospital for holidays.  I remember the Christmas of 2009 when Brad walked again for the first time in four months, and our whole family broke down in tears of gratitude. 

The treatment for cancer, particularly leukemia, is indescribably difficult.  During the first 3 ½ years of treatment, I regularly narrated a few of the key events through social media for the literally thousands of people who were concerned and praying for Brad.  When Brad relapsed in 2013, we were devastated.  In many ways, I lost my voice during that time.  I had written about the hope we have in God through Christ and our firm conviction that he was good and would bring something meaningful from even these horrific times.  When Brad relapsed in 2013, my convictions hadn’t changed, but my strength wavered.  We retreated into a much narrower circle of those with whom we shared our struggles.  Week after week and month after month – from 2013 through 2015 – we dealt with struggle and setback and fear.  Time after time, Brad’s life was hanging by a thread as the chemo took his immunity to zero for days on end and he struggled with life threatening fungal and septic infections.  At many points, my hope was wobbly.

As I sit here this morning, it has been over a year and a half since Brad has had any treatment for leukemia in his spinal column – the area where he relapsed in 2013.  His last oral or IV maintenance chemo treatments ended in May.  He has completed the first semester of his sophomore year in chemical engineering with an eye upon medical school.  Although we still have to deal with the lingering and not insignificant impacts of the leukemia treatment, life in this area is good! 

Yet, as I am learning, just as we move past one hurdle in life, we reach the next.  Over Christmas, I went to see my mother who we recently moved to a memory care facility specializing in Alzheimer’s Disease treatment.  For the first time ever, I am not certain that she knew me – I know there were points when she did not.  She had great difficulty finishing a thought and moved randomly from one thing to another.  She did not realize where she was anymore.  This is a new kind of difficulty for which I have no experience – just like most of life’s difficulties.

What is my point in all this?  Many, if not most, of us are struggling at any given time.  If not at the moment, each of us will be struggling soon enough.    Life is a series of struggles.  Some of us get them rapid fire and others get more space in between, but we all have them.  The truth is, this is a normal state of being.  Merry Christmas!  (You can thank me for this good cheer at your leisure.)  It’s OK to admit we struggle.  The challenge is to determine what we will do with it.  The older I get, the more I realize that that the only thing that makes sense out of pain is God himself.  As strange as it seems to some, it is in our difficulty that we see him.  It is in the pain where we recognize our need for him.

As I start the New Year, I want to be more attuned to the struggles of those around me.  I hope to better encourage others to find strength by turning to God.  I also want to draw strength from others who walk with God in their struggles to help me in my own.  We will all have struggles, but we don’t have to wallow in them.  There is always hope in God.  There is always help from others.  Coming on the heels of Christmas, many are dealing with the ongoing pain of relationships and life situations that are not what you want them to be.  Perhaps it is time to approach things differently.  Perhaps it is time to turn to God.  You may not be able to change the situation, but God can change you.  This is where I want to be for 2017.