Steve Ruetschle

From Michelle.  15 December, 2010.

Dearest Friends and Family,

What a lot has happened since I wrote last!  I woke up several days ago to find that the flood warnings I had so casually noted on the nightly news now applied to us.  A river was literally flowing straight down a hill and into our basement.  If I had had a boat, I could have white water rafted down the stairs.  Fortunately a blocked drain was quickly fixed but it left a foot of water in our basement and wet walls and carpets in our guest house, as well as a soggy mess in the garage.  Since then we have been in emergency clean up mode.  Thank God for visiting friends who have pulled and lifted and tossed item after item out of garage and basement.  As one friend put it, God is so amazing that he brought friends from Manila, Hong Kong and Portland to answer the call.  Curiously, other than the obvious physical exhaustion, nature’s small calamity has had little effect on me.  While things were lost, the perspective offered by the accident, the sheer gratitude for every breath, for all of the love, has transformed this new challenge into a bothersome chore and no more.  Please do pray for our wonderful landlady, however.  Her losses are far greater, both personal and financial, and though she has bravely soldiered on, her load is heavy.

Steve continues to plod faithfully on, and is rewarded each week with continued progress.  Though he still needs his power chair for any significant activity, he walks wherever and whenever he can.  This  means that he can get to the kitchen or an appointment on crutches, however even a walk around a large store is still too much, let alone any greater distance.  Steve is tasting the freedom from his chair, however, and it is spurring him on.

God continues to fold his wings around us in a sheltering embrace.  On a drive to the airport recently to pick up a friend, I wept tears of joy and gratitude at the loving presence we feel so deeply each day.  In my mind’s eye I imagine a radiant joy streaming down toward me, offering riches far beyond our circumstances.  While the disciplines of life remain, a promise also plants itself in our hearts.

This is a quiet Advent for us, far from Manila’s rash of parties and lights.   While I deeply miss the many circles of friends and celebrations that we enjoyed there, I am trying to embrace the quieter anticipation that this more mundane rhythm of life allows.  And what I am finding in that quiet is a deep sense of prosperity.  Even as I am surrounded by loss, in waterlogged piles and physical incapacity, in spirit, in space and in time, I am aware of a profound richness so deep and wide and real, that all that is temporary merely fades in its presence.

And so, this is my prayer for you and me this week: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”  Ephesians 3:16-19.

With love,

Michelle

From Michelle.  30 November, 2010.

Dear friends and family,

The holiday season is upon us, heralded this year in a most unusual fashion by snow! The week of Thanksgiving found us snowed in, the children home from school for days.  The boys took full advantage of the first snow they can remember, with scraped together snowballs from the meager snow supply, and several adventures with Dale, our caregiver, who kindly took them for the kind of boyish romps Steve would have supplied in the past.  Zephyr stayed outside long enough to experiment with the cold, but opted for the more familiar warmth found indoors.  Even Steve braved the cold and slippery conditions briefly in his chair, though he still has difficulty regulating his body temperature.  We all enjoyed hunkering down for some very slow and cozy days in the comfort of our home, with abundant supplies of hot chocolate, fires in the fireplace and other wintry delights.  By the time Thanksgiving came around we were ready for a break from our snow-induced isolation, and thankfully a stream of visitors answered the call!  Thank you to all who brought food and company to us!  We were awash in genuine thanksgiving this year!

It has been far too long, but happily, there is much to report.  In the past few days we have experienced another major shift in Steve’s healing process, which greatly impacts our quality of life.  Steve has shifted more and more toward using a walker.  Where in the past he would walk for perhaps thirty minutes out of an entire 24 hour day, Steve now most often grabs his walker or his manual chair around the house.  For two whole days this week, Steve stayed out of his power chair entirely.  His confidence and strength have grown so much that we have now done several outings without any wheelchair at all.  A Harborview therapy appointment, church on Sunday and a movie date were all accomplished with little more than a walker and a whole lot of effort and joy!

Without a wheelchair life becomes much more normalized.  Steve can sit in a normal car seat, he can ride an escalator, he can access public bathrooms more easily, and he can sit in church pews, movie theater seats and in restaurant booths.  Of course, getting up and down from them remains a challenge, but so far we have managed!

We have often joked during this period that we are practicing for old age.  The patience amidst the slow pace of life, the endurance through the body’s break downs, and the humbling dependence on others is a good rehearsal for our twilight years. The other day at Harborview, Steve saw an elderly man, perhaps in his eighties, walking with a walker and commented that he looked like him.  “No, honey,” I replied, “he looks better than you!”  Still, for us, this slow and awkward ambling short distances from car to destination is like the euphoric sprint at the end of a long race.  For us, the freedom and relative speed and spontaneity with which we are more and more able to participate in life is like that burst of energy that comes when the finish line comes into sight.  Make no mistake, the end is still far off, and yet, and yet, we can taste the promise of it as Steve stretches his limbs to walk, ever faster and further.

Much remains to be tested.  Steve’s fingers remain limited in both strength and function.    He still endures his long morning routine and requires help getting bathed and dressed.  His sensation remains highly compromised from the chest down.  But we also see so much progress.  From the middle of the race, the scenery has improved drastically.  Many amazing professionals have also spontaneously come out of the woodwork to run alongside us.  This has been God’s amazing provision and choreography as Steve’s many outpatient therapies will soon be canceled due to budget cuts for Medicaid beginning in January.  We are daily amazed by the astonishing generosity of people who drive many miles to come to us and serve us with their gifts.

And so with Thanksgiving behind us and the hope of grace born among us ahead, we are bracketed by both gratitude and expectation.  All the promises of God find their “yes” in that babe in the manger.  And much like the babe, God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness.  His grace has been sufficient, and even abundantly present, day by day.    For this, and for you, we are grateful!

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  1 Thess. 5:16-18.

With love,

Michelle

From Michelle.  17 November, 2010.

Dearest friends and family,

What a difference a week makes.  Thanks to your amazing prayers and a generous helping of grace, Steve is doing much better.  While his shoulder is still frozen and he continues to make four trips to Harborview per week to work on it, he is making good progress.  Thanks to two other physical therapist friends who are willing to make house calls, his shoulder gets “cranked” six times per week.  The shin splints are also improving.  While his bursitis remains, it is not infected.  Best of all, not a single therapy appointment has been canceled or curtailed due to unusually high amounts of spasms.  Praise God!

More good news: we have officially financially qualified for Medicaid.  My understanding is that we have to be approved by a social worker next in order for Steve’s status to be activated, but this should take far less time.  Please keep praying!  We are hopeful!

In church on Sunday, the following verses were read from Psalm 139: “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”  My heart knew the shape of each letter, the sound of each vowel and consonant.  I have known that sweet surrounding presence, echoing through many, many years and dark corners of my life.  The truth of it was like an old friend.  Wonderful to find firm footing once again in that familiar comfort, even as the terrain changes constantly.

We had a lovely time at the pool on Monday.  The pool Steve regularly visits is a therapy pool, which is heated to an unusually warm temperature.  It is crowded with elderly and disabled folk and their therapists, enjoying the warmth and buoyancy of the water.  For the first time, I brought Zephyr, along with Steve and his caregiver Dale.  Zephyr, of course, had a grand old time splashing about in the warm water, playing along the long wheelchair ramp into the pool, and jumping from the edge into my arms.  What had been a mere therapy routine was now a child’s delight, and the delight of several onlookers.

There are so many activities from our former life to miss.  One of the most poignant of these for Steve is wrestling with the boys, an oft-spoken language of love and laughter among father and sons, now in the past.  How precious, then, to watch Steve grab Zephyr in the water!  In the Philippines this was a frequent pastime, a welcome respite from the heat and a terrific play time with the kids.  Now it is a precious respite from gravity, but still a terrific play time with the kids!  We’ll have to bring the older boys soon!

Last week, I ended with trust.  This week, I end with praise.  From my very favorite psalm (63): “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.”

Dear friends and family, we are so grateful for all of you!

Love,

Michelle

From Michelle.  9 November, 2010.

Dear friends and family,

This has been a hard week.  Overall, this last month has been a rewarding uphill climb, leading almost daily to fresh new vistas, greater capacity, more hope.  But there were bound to be more discouraging notes in the repetitively optimistic refrain, and here we are, singing in a minor key!

As we talked about it today, Steve likened it to the stage in a marathon where you want to give up, that inevitable moment that you just have to push through where it just doesn’t seem worth it, where it seems far more enticing to throw in the towel than to proceed.  He followed this up with a quick assurance that indeed he WOULD proceed, however it did not diminish the powerful temptation to simply throw in the towel.

It began with the news about his shoulder.  As most of you know, Steve has several tears in his shoulder, typical of sports injuries, some old and some new, possibly caused by the accident or its aftermath.  These injuries cause pain when he uses his right arm and he had been advised to lay off of it as much as possible until a long awaited appointment with a specialist, which finally happened last week.  The specialist, however, was so concerned with how frozen Steve’s shoulder had become from lack of use that he did not even address fixing the tears!  Instead we have now increased Steve’s appointments at Harborview to at least four times a week so that a therapist can painfully “crank” on his shoulder, or in other words, unfreeze it.  This involves more hours of driving and a more complex therapy structure, not to mention the discouraging prospect that any meaningful treatment of the tears will be a long way off.  Until the shoulder is fully healed, Steve cannot use or exercise his arms rigorously, and the sense of returning strength and progress to these essential body parts is postponed.

That same day, they discovered bursitis in Steve’s elbow, a fluid that has gathered around the joint, most likely from the constant movement and pressure on the elbow from driving the wheelchair.  While this is not a serious condition, it was another ailment to address.

Several days later, Steve found walking unusually painful in his left leg, and his foot seemed to behave oddly, inhibiting his walking.  His usually enthusiastic trainer advised him to cancel his next session and take a break.  It looks like Steve has developed a shin splint in his left leg, most likely from overdoing it at the pool the day before.  Again, not a grave condition, but nevertheless an inconvenience that has kept him from the therapies that keep him motivated and keep the progress coming.

The final blow came yesterday and today.  Steve has been experiencing an unusual amount of spasms in his legs, particularly in his hamstrings.  This new development stirs a long held and legitimate fear that Steve has had, that spasms might get stronger in his body and ultimately prevent him from walking in any meaningful sense.  Spasms tend to fluctuate in spinal cord injury patients, the result of an inordinate number of messages being sent from the brain to a particular body part, and their process has been difficult to predict.  While he has always had them, they have not significantly interfered with his progress.  Today, however, they did.

I have often spoken of the fragility of hope, and of the increasing delicacy and vulnerability of that hope as its realization approaches.  Each little set back is like a rock thrown at that fragile cobweb of desire, with ever fewer strands holding it together.  I can see the tatters fluttering in Steve’s eyes even as he soldiers on through the moment when everything in him says he might as well give up.

These are days when we must choose very decisively how to respond to our emotions, when we must choose very deliberately what story we are going to tell.  Is the world unwell, is God unfaithful because of these set backs?  No!  Is it difficult and discouraging?  Yes!

Steve, in his teaching on the psalms, has often cited the fact that so very many of the psalms are laments.  I have always loved that the bible allows so much room for the honest wrestling of believers with their maker.  Certainly, we are not meant to absorb suffering without emotion or complaint or struggle.  The general structure of a lament psalm follows a particular pattern: a complaint followed by a request followed by an expression of trust.  In our prayers, the pattern is the same.  The path of pain in its redemptive phase ultimately leads us to a posture of trust.  Leaving the questions behind, we find ourselves, like Job, simply standing small but seen in the presence of something greater.  And we wait.

A few verses from a lament psalm (psalm 69:1-3,13,16,18, 32-34) that spoke to me today as I thought of Steve:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with crying out, my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.
…
But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord,
At an acceptable time, O God,
in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.
…
Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
draw near to my soul, redeem me.
…
You who seek God, let your hearts revive.
For the Lord hears the needy…
…
Let heaven and earth praise him!

Please continue to pray with me for Steve, for his healing, for his fragile hope, for his perseverance through this point in the race, and for a continued trust in something greater.  He continues to amaze me with his faithfulness, with his amazing capacity to love even in the midst of his own fear and suffering, and with his endurance and trust.  His spirit remains beautiful and strong, while also deeply challenged.

We both continue to be amazed and heartened by all of your love and support.  We covet your prayers, that make a difference.

Love,

Michelle

From Michelle.  2 November, 2010.

Dear friends and family,

I woke up this morning with a sense of incompletion.  In my rush to press “send” I missed something in my last post.  What I missed was all of the joy.

The daily mountains, the dogged spirit, the weight of gravity, these are all present.  But so is joy.  And gratitude.  And love and laughter and life in all fullness.  God is so very, very good, because while the days are full of new disciplines, these are punctuated by so many sweet moments – our wonderful family, dear old friends and wonderful new friendships made, God’s good provision through all of you.  We all know that suffering brings out the most essential in life.  And so we give thanks daily for the amazing blessing we have received in all of those essentials: our three beautiful boys, our loving marriage, the beautiful roof over our heads, our wealth of friends and fellowship, the gorgeous scenery that surrounds us and most profoundly, our good God.  Life is difficult, but it is also whole and sweet and rich in so very many respects.  And so we DO rejoice, genuinely and often, amidst the ruins.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!  Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s!…Bless the Lord, O my soul!”  Psalm 103:1-5;22.

Love,

Michelle

From Michelle.  November 1, 2010.

Dear friends and family,

It is already November.  The trees here are a riot of colors, and even the bamboo planted around our house is shifting shades to match this cold, wet season.  Yesterday we carved pumpkins and went trick-or-treating with the boys, making the most of these American traditions, which are new experiences for their memory banks.  Dressing now requires additional and unaccustomed layers of sweaters, vests and jackets.  Zephyr still refuses to wear socks most days.  Too strange a sensation for his previously unfettered feet.  Tomorrow our firstborn turns nine years old.

Much is also changing in Steve’s body.  During his therapy sessions, Steve now practices walking with crutches or a cane, as well as with the now usual walker.  Upon occasion he has even walked without anything at all!  After a mix up that forced us to try to get into a friend’s house up two stairs, Steve is now also practicing stairs in therapy.  Stairs!  Less dramatic but equally astounding is the progress in Steve’s hands.  His thumb can now bend over to touch not just his middle finger but his ring finger, and almost his pinky.  Strength, though elusive, is returning.  His grip and pinch are getting stronger.  Yesterday, for the first time ever, he bent his thumb ever so slightly.

As time wears on, the prospect of a plateau of some kind looms.  Steve’s hope becomes ever more fragile even as the likelihood of its realization grows.  Oh yes, he is walking!  And yet each step requires all of his effort and concentration.  While the rest of us cheer and are amazed, Steve soberly manages his hope under that oppressive weight of gravity.  Steve looks to each day’s mountain and climbs it doggedly.  To look too far ahead to the next peak is simply too much, both for hope and for sustainability.  And so he gives thanks for the slight bending of a thumb and goes to bed fortifying himself for what the next day will bring.

I try to keep his pace.  While the hope in me quickens, and I want to stretch for that finish line, I look over at him and slow to a more consistent gait – more appropriate for the middle stretch of a marathon.  His perspective is better.  I stop to imagine the parade of hours he faces, the weight he strains against in order to move the smallest finger or shift his hips, and the continuing humbling process of being washed and dressed by another.  And I imagine that fragile hope he carries, that thirsty little flame that he must quietly, faithfully lay at the Lord’s feet each day.

Together we stop to drink from your prayers, from glowing reports of the benefit in Manila, from cards, thoughts and encounters with friends, from scripture readings.  Then we move on, fortified.

The list of answered prayers grows dazzlingly longer and we pinch ourselves.  How did we ever deserve such grace?!  Of course, we didn’t or it would not be grace.  But we drink hungrily from that sweet fountain!  On the list: a house sold, sleep returned, fingers moving, walking without support, stairs!  I keep readjusting my hopes for our anniversary further and further into the realm of what months ago seemed impossible!  Gone are the few tentative steps I had imagined.  Perhaps we will dance on December 30th, 2010?

Today I found comfort from Lamentations 3:19-24.   After descriptions of terrible affliction, the prophet Jeremiah (we think) says, “…my soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “my endurance has perished; so has my hope in the Lord.”  Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!  My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.  But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

The phrase that caught my eye was inconsequential, perhaps: this I call to mind and therefore I have hope…  this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.  Remember, o my soul!  Have faith!  Trust!  Then I think of Steve’s gait, his very daily, very present practice.  One step, one mountain.  And I think, new every morning.  Yes, the Lord is good and faithful and enough for each day.  Steve puts on his daily faith and bends a finger and lifts a leg, and with each step, he is saying, “great is your faithfulness.”

We love you all!

Michelle

PS  Steve and I have been once again overwhelmed by the sweet fellowship, love and support of our church family, this time halfway around the world in Manila.  By all accounts this was a spirit-filled, sweetly tearful but also beautifully joyous gathering, led by an amazingly talented set of performers who so generously donated their time to Union Church and to Steve and I.  We are truly overwhelmed, and longed with all our hearts to join our broken voices with your beautiful ones!  I hope to post pictures when I have them.  In the meantime, thank you beautiful friends far off for joining in the chorus!  We love you!

From Michelle.  October 20, 2010.

Dear friends and family,

How I have longed to write following last Friday’s benefit concert!  Steve and I are still basking in the afterglow, and will be for many months.  Walking into that room full of people, friends old and new, and some that I had never met, all looking at us with such love and encouragement and hope, it was all I could do not to weep.  The air was thick with every good and perfect thing, church redeemed and redeeming, all of us walking together, all of them carrying us to the feet of Jesus.  Each song was some reflection of the spiritual truth that while suffering is inevitable, faith carries us through.  Each lyric, each poem, each prayer and proclamation was a variant on that theme: God is strong in our weakness, victory was won through suffering, Christ shares our yoke, and on and on.  The beauty of the event was that I think we all brought our suffering to Christ’s feet that night.  Not just Steve and mine.  And when Steve stood up out of his wheelchair and received a standing ovation, we were not just applauding him, but living the hope, the wonder of God’s goodness breaking through.  For all of us.

That night hundreds of people gathered to cheer us on.  As people gathered around us to pray, a web of prayer and support spread throughout the room, beginning in the hidden depression where Steve sat in his lowly wheelchair and then spreading out, hand upon shoulder upon hand upon shoulder, a physical reflection of the web of prayer that has spread throughout the world.  It was a beautiful tapestry of young and old, male and female, rich and poor united in hope and faith and love.  It was magnificent.

In my early twenties I struggled mightily with church.  Like so many, the curtain parted and I saw the human frailty behind the haloed institution.  I wrestled with the hypocrisy and the history and the division and the judgment.  I wrestled with the gossip and the pride and the abuses.  Until I remembered that the Christ whom I so loved asked us to love EVERYONE, yes, even fallen christians and broken churches, and that no darkness was too dark for him to penetrate.  After all, he had chosen to love ME.

What I am trying to say is that last Friday night, and through this entire journey beginning on June 17th, the church has shone so brightly I’ve had to squint to look into the light.  We have experienced more generosity, more encouragement, more humble service, more prayer than any two human beings could rightly absorb.  I could tell you tale after tale after tale.  Some of that generosity and support has come from people who know and love us.  Some has come from complete strangers who know us only through the faith we share or the church we attend.  Most of those people would not want to be named.  They take joy in doing their good deed in secret, for the love of God.    But Steve and I get to witness it and take it in.  And what we get to see is the church redeemed.  And it heals us and carries us and fills us with hope.  And we will never forget it.  For all of its scars, for all of the hurts past and future, right now and last Friday night the church is beautiful beyond measure.

One of my many favorite moments was when Steve spoke.  Until now, Steve has remained largely silent.  While his actions have spoken powerfully to us all, I have missed his voice, which has taught and ministered to me as much as to any congregation member all of these years.  But there he was, and instantly I knew that he was not just going to talk to all of us.  Steve was going to preach.  And he was going to bless me again with his teaching.  Steve talked about the paralytic healed by the faith of his friends, and I will not do it justice if I try to replicate it here.  But what he said got to the heart of the matter.  What he said is essentially that you all are healing us by your faith, carrying us closer to the God who heals.  And Friday night was a magnificent demonstration of just that.

We have said it again and again, but love truly carries us, yours and Christ’s.  Your presence surrounding us that night, and in the prayers and hopes and thoughts and verses quoted on this blog, have been as St. Patrick’s prayer, which I printed up and carried with me to Manila five years ago:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
 Christ behind me, Christ before me,
 Christ beside me, Christ to win me, 
Christ to comfort and restore me.
  Christ beneath me, Christ above me, 
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
 Christ in hearts of all that love me,
 Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Thank you to all of you, who surround us with this amazing love!

With gratitude overflowing,
Michelle

From Michelle.  October 13, 2010.

Dear friends and family,

Our marathon drags on, in all it’s glorious monotony: the daily regimens of pills, stretches, therapies, bed baths, bowel programs, and so on, not to mention the predictable rhythms of life with small children.  It has been harder to see the swells of the waves moving us forward as each day fades into the next with fewer ripples, and our attention is focused now on a faithfulness to the details, and an enduring discipline.

Each night after the kids are tucked in, Steve and I go through the same routine: the transfer to bed, the removal of Steve’s shoes, the heaving of the wheelchair into the corner and the plugging in, the undoing of the belly binder, the checking of the skin for pressure sores, the removal of one kind of pressure stocking and the putting on of another, the undressing which takes both of us, the careful arrangement of pillows, the sleeping pills to be gotten and the table placed just so with its morning pill at the ready, Steve’s phone within reach in case of emergency, the water pouch hanging with its tube carefully laid within reach and a sentry of urinals for nighttime bladder control.  We are engaged in a carefully choreographed routine, framed by both care and incapacity.  Surely there are pinpoints of glory in the wash of these daily regimens, but as Steve’s brother Mark put it during a visit, (and I am paraphrasing here), there is so much slogging for a few moments of glory.

Little freedoms from these constraints come steadily, as the routine bends and shifts with Steve’s ever changing skill set.  Steve can now transfer himself to bed for the most part, though he still needs help with small, seemingly inconsequential things like adjustments to the pillow under his head, or flattening the bedding underneath him so that no wrinkles cause undue pressure to his skin.  We are experimenting with freedom from the belly binder, and someday those impossible pressure stockings will follow.  For us, this scene is mercifully fluid.  For others with similar injuries, it remains the same for the rest of their lives.

This week, I have been meditating on the prayer that the eyes of my heart would be enlightened.  I was reading Ephesians 1:17-18, and this fragment of Paul’s prayer for his Ephesian brothers and sisters struck a deep cord: “…that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you…”  I have written, tentatively, about hope.  Each day it is a balancing beam upon which I precariously shift my weight, looking for that perfect equilibrium between anticipation and submission, desire and acceptance.  Steve is all the more precariously perched, and the temptation is to become so consumed by the superficial challenges and the disheartening limitations of this life that the deeper essence is missed.  But here in this slower, less glamorous rhythm of days, in the middle stretch of the marathon, there is also the opportunity to know him more, to become reacquainted with the hope to which he has called us, to have our hearts enlightened.  Elsewhere in the bible, in Romans 5:3-5, it says, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame…”  It is a spiritual mystery that suffering with God, we might gain hope.  Perhaps the key lies in the bigger picture, because through suffering, I know that I am reminded both of my weakness and of his strength, and I am also reminded that this current state is not God’s perfect and final answer – there is more on that other shore.  And in his strength, and in that eternal glory lies my deepest hope.  I don’t want to miss it.

With love,
Michelle