Grist for the mill of obedience

Ron Carleton

From the beginning of the illness, emotional trauma has always been the most debilitating of trials--the idea gnaws at the edges of my mind that our very high-stress life in France is a factor in this disease that blackens my existence. If I had become an architect in Winnipeg or a banker in Calgary, might I still be in good health and spirits? I will never know.

Instead, I did what seemed to be more important, what I thought God wanted me to do, I took Bible school training and became a Christian worker. In my present trials, it does not seem very important any more--God and the church certainly do not depend in any way on me.

I thought in my naiveté that God at least wanted (although He does not need) my participation, that by grace He accords to His creatures the status of co-workers. Apparently I was wrong--at least as concerns myself. My world is limited to the range of my electric wheelchair--on nice days. My testimony, as far as I know, stops with my family and those who may be encouraged to see me continuing in church in spite of my trials. My writing, the only thing I can still do, falls into the void, a mere pastime by which I lighten a little the intolerable burden of existence.

For years, I have not been sure God really wanted us to serve in France. I see the Bible's teaching about what kind of people we are to be--thankful, rejoicing and praise-filled, counting on His grace and forgiveness for our hope of glory. I see that our geographic location is a mere accident of choice and happenstance, grist for the mill of obedience, that mill that has devoured me alive and spat me out in rejected fragments. Almost all my joys have been torn away; almost all my prayers, especially regarding myself, are refused. It is an act of faith, against all present evidence, even to say they are refused--to believe Someone is listening.

The question that tortures me the most regards my children, my precious girls. MS is not directly inherited, according to current research, but the syndrome that renders the nervous system vulnerable to such a collapse is. Do my girls bear within their beings the seeds of destruction? No one knows. If they decide in their turn to have children, will the fatality be repeated in them? Who can say?

I think back to the time of our beginnings as a couple. At first, I was reluctant to have children, for the age-old reasons of the uncertainty of life and the difficulty of parenting. Over the course of our first two years together, I came around little by little so that I was willing to have offspring. It took an~other year and a little more for our first daughter to be conceived, the others following 33 months, then 30 more months, later.

But without our darling daughters, I am not sure we could have gone on as a couple. From the beginning, family was important to my sweet wife, more than to me. I have never felt the terror of being without issue that seems to work so strongly on some. But the fact remains that without those three won~derful young ones, nobody can say what would have become of us. Talking about might-have-beens is easy in one sense--whatever blitherings come forth, one cannot be proven wrong. However, the questions raise their ugly heads and drive me wild, especially when it is impossible to distract myself or do anything at all in the early mornings.

When I see the beauty of our girls, how could I wish that they did not exist? So much loveliness and energy and creativity not to be in the world? When I see the love and devotion my affliction calls forth, that is a good thing. With all my heart, I pray and wish to be released from my cross; but it works what is good and right and beautiful in my beloved wife and our precious young ones.

Present reality is that our children exist in this world. The choices and processes that led to their being began long before my affliction. Their father is a most unhappy husk of his former self, the quick of me torn out, leaving only the bleeding remnants of what I was before; but without my dear family, I would be much more miserable than I am. It is an inconceivable blessing to have lived with my beloved wife, to know that what we had in nine healthy years, many search for for their entire lives without finding.

And my girls. It is an unending miracle to have my three little flowers before my wondering gaze. There is a song by Garth Brooks that says,

Since, in any case, it is not in my control, I will enjoy what can still be enjoyed and endure what must be endured.