From Michelle. 18 February, 2011.
Dear friends and family,
We have arrived at yet another threshold, peeking through a new doorway at the next uncertain stretch of space. Steve now has permission to walk without “assistive devices” around the home. We are beginning to pare down the visits with therapists and specialists and will soon be joining a normal gym and doing much of Steve’s therapy routine from home. Thanks to a recent epiphany, Steve’s gait is more natural and quicker than it was, though still slow and laborious by any normal standard. Target remains a target as far as walking distance is concerned. Steve’s sensation continues to be significantly altered below the chest. Hot and cold remain elusive impressions rather than actual feelings. We experiment with suppositories and routines. We make plans, setting concrete poles into the shifting sands. Then, we hold our breaths and wonder if they’ll stand.
Steve applies the same energy and attention he once gave to his weekly sermon to the less enthralling but equally essential study of walking. Who knew so much went into those thoughtless motions, the complex mechanism of muscle, nerve and bone we command so recklessly? Steve considers each step: how much he needs to use his hip, flex his thigh, how to bend his ankle just so, and lately, how much to push off with the balls of his feet. There is a complex symphony of biological instruments to conduct. While I cheer, he concentrates and tries to get the tune right. The effort comes off in a sweetly clumsy adaptation of the original. We still pray for the day that he will move once more with the ease and abandon we took for granted only months ago.
Amidst these daily struggles, the miracles keep coming. There is one room in our house that Steve has never seen. It is the tiny loft with a ladder for a staircase where our two big boys sleep, tucked away like two birds in a nest. They love their little perch above the rest of the house, but it might as well be located at the top of a cliff as far as Steve has been concerned. Steve has never been able to reach it even for a quick peek, let alone to read a bedtime story or kiss them goodnight. The other day while I was out I received a video message from Steve. He and the boys were in their room, blowing me goodnight kisses. Somehow, he had climbed up the ladder! I chuckled with tears in my eyes and said a quick prayer for his descent.
These are among the many moments which are almost unbearably precious and fill our hearts with thanksgiving. Thanks to the charitable arm of the hospital, our bill is finally set at zero. What a beautiful number! Steve’s breathing was recently tested and rated at the bottom end of normal for the first time. Steve passed his cognitive tests with flying colors. We continue to prayerfully explore the hopeful possibility of returning to the Philippines. We continue to be amazed and delighted by the consistency of love, prayer and support from all of you at a time when you could easily tire of our story. We give special thanks for a whole team of talented professionals who donate their time and expertise to assist in Steve’s recovery in the most tangible of ways.
Please do continue to pray for Steve’s hands, bowels, bladder, nerve pain, bodily pain, leg spasms and sensation. While the rest of his body seems to recover at a more rapid rate, these areas remain challenging.
Strangely, what I am most aware of beyond the day to day challenges, is the joy of God. Every time I look beyond myself, since the accident, I sense a radiant presence: God, full of light and joy, is beaming waves of pure delight down on me. Somehow this does not occur as incongruous to the current difficulties, nor insensitive to the pain and loss. Rather, there is a context for joy that is becoming increasingly concrete, no matter what other realities are at play. I audaciously put myself in God’s shoes and imagine how he sees this momentary pain, amidst the sweeping topography of eternity. I imagine all that is not right, an entire human history of pain and suffering, and then I place it in the universe, among the glorious stars and galaxies that seemingly have no end. Or I imagine the droplet of this earthly life, a tiny composite both beautiful and forsaken, falling into an ocean of heaven, of all as it was meant to be, and disappearing amidst the magnificent depths. The context is so vast that I cannot grasp it. I feel as if I am somehow brushing up against eternal glory. A tiny corner of my imagination lightly touches on a mere sketch of that reality and trembles. In those moments, a place in my heart opens up to the joy, and I begin to apprehend it. It does not take away the pain. Nor does it take away the sense of God’s great compassion for all of us, the shared suffering that even God chose to assume in human form. But a context of joy becomes more and more palpable. Dallas Willard called it taking on “the substance of the eternal”. The bible calls it an “eternal weight of glory”.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18: “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we do not look to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
With love,
Michelle
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