From Michelle. 8 February, 2013.
Dear friends and family,
We are now approaching three years since Steve’s accident. I wish I could say that we have settled into a routine, into acceptance, into a familiarity with the new parameters of our life, but instead I feel as if we are still crashing up and down on stormy waves, in unfamiliar territory. Each day still feels new. I cannot predict the effects each particular configuration of hours will have on Steve’s body. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the evolution of this process. Some days ring with triumphal normalcy while others are devastatingly crippling. The facts do not line up easily. We rake the details for some noticeable pattern and come up empty handed.
In some ways, it would be easier to have a dependable list, a bold line, a static set of variables with which to work. Decisions would be easier. We could bury hope and set about the work of acquiescence. We could develop routine. Instead the shifts come daily and sometimes hourly, the breakdowns in unlikely places, unpredictable movements, surprising victories.
This week has been replete with breakdowns. This week, the boys are getting used to me asking them to give Papa goodnight kisses in his bed because getting up to administer the customary prayers and cuddles and tuckings in is simply too much for him at the end of these particular days. Why now and for how long we cannot say. What did he eat, what did he do, how long did he stand, how did he sleep? We are like scientists isolating and assessing every factor, every day, and yet no pattern emerges and permanent solutions are elusive.
It is the perfect faith-building storm. Prolonged and mysterious, we can garner no security from any humanly constructed shelters. The sand beneath the waves shifts continually. A very close friend recently asked me how I manage to achieve such calm through it all. She is not wrong to perceive a thread of tranquility throughout the seismic shifts in well-being. I cannot attribute it to myself. There is a shelter that seems to guard us from the worst of the wind and rain.
I cling to the Lord differently each day, but I run for his presence more hungrily than ever, knowing with ever growing certainty that the truths I find there do not move, whatever the storm is doing outside. Slightly rebellious for most of my youth, I have developed a new love for the law. No casual appreciation here; I have come to adore it. I am still a lover of adventure, and yet my prayers ring with gratitude for what does not change, for what is certain. I find rest in scriptures such as this one, that previously rang hollow: The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. (Psalm 19:7) Like the apostle James, I rejoice that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change (James 1:17). The immutability of God, the enduring, everlasting steadfastness no longer seems threatening, nor boring, nor frighteningly rigid. Now this constancy brings relief, brings assurance, brings rest. No matter how I come, he does not change. Indeed, I am learning with increasing joy that in him it is always Yes (2 Corinthians 1:19).
With love and gratitude,
Michelle