Many Scars

Life is insane. I told my wife the other day that I thought that the older you get the weirder life gets. I think back at things over the past 5 to 10 years and things are just odd. Things happen to people you would never guess it would happen to. People die you thought would be around forever. You think you know someone and you don’t. This list goes on.

Back Pain

This all started when my wife and I moved back from the hurricane ravaged Panama City. I had started a grooming shop in the local town we had settled into, and she was given a job as a manager at a local department store. At first, it wasn’t too bad. But she came home every day complaining of back pain. It grew worse and worse, and we chocked it up to standing on concrete all day and a pulled muscle. She went through some agonizing pain to which she wasn’t even able to move, and eventually it got better.

Doctors, and more doctors

One day, about 3 months ago, she went to the doctors and her doctor ordered physical therapy due to some upper back pain and shoulder pain. She went to about 5 or 6 sessions only to realize that it was making the pain worse, and per her physical therapist, she ceased physical therapy. After going back to the doctor, and getting a referral to a spine surgeon, many ER visits and debilitating pain, she finally received an MRI. When she went into the spine surgeon’s office, he informed her that her issues were not bulging discs pressing on nerves as they thought. He told her that there are two kinds of nerve issues: surgical and disease. And she didn’t have the surgical kind of nerve issues. He informed her later that it is definitely disease. Disease. DISEASE.

He told her that she is showing symptoms to a couple different neurological diseases, one including multiple sclerosis. Up until this point, our lives were pretty normal. This changed a lot.

Over the next couple days, my wife dives into studying the disease. Not WebMD or Wikipedia, but the actual MS Society’s webpage and first hand accounts with people with MS. The surgeon seemed more convinced that it was MS than the other diseases, but it takes a battery of tests and MRI’s to actually determine that, so we were gearing up for our journey through this together.

Emotions

To say we were emotional is an understatement. The day she came back from the doctor, she wasn’t really too informative on what he had said. She didn’t want me to worry. I understand that and don’t fault her at all. She did let me know very gently. At first I wasn’t too cognitive of the severity of the situation. I was just kind of stunned and wandering in my thoughts. What did this mean? Will my wife be paralyzed? It wasn’t until the next day that it really hit me. My wife is really good at hiding her emotions from me, especially in instances like this. She only does it so I don’t get more sad or worry. I understand that. But I wasn’t able to hide it. We cried. We prayed. We accepted what God had allowed as our journey, knowing that He would do something through this. What it is, I don’t know. But with out sickness, how can you know He is a healer.

Cliché

Before we ever told a single person, I told my wife that I knew it would happen. Granted it usually comes out of the kindness of someone’s heart, but it’s kind of like when someone dies, people try to say the right thing, and after a while, it just gets annoying or old. Now, where this hits with me is doctrine. Go figure, eh? The first thing that was said when I told someone about this situation was: “Don’t claim it!” Now, I do understand the intentions, but I know that nothing comes to me if it hasn’t went through the hands of God first. We aren’t guaranteed physical spontaneous healing. I believe God heals that way. I also believe He uses things to bring people back to God and to show Himself through our weakness.

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. 2 Corinthians 12:10

This verse doesn’t say that my infirmities are automatically taken away. It says that in those infirmities, I take pleasure, because when I am weak God is strong. It goes with that whole denying yourself thing. NO narrative of any Scripture is about us getting the glory. It is all about His glory.

If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:

But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. 1 Peter 4:11-13

This should go without explanation. But again, people forget these verses exist I guess. A self-absorbed doctrine would forget they exist.

I do get afraid that my adamancy against name it and claim it/blab it and grab it will come off as faithless. Nay nay. I believe that God is a healer. I know He can heal my wife. I know He will heal my wife, but until that healing comes, this is where we are. Consider the following:

And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him.

And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,

And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse 

She had the issue of blood for 12 years! But her situation made her desperate. How many lessons in 12 years did she learn about life, herself, and God. I am assuming she had some sort of faith in order to seek out the Messiah for healing.

When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.

For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.

And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. Mark 5:25-29

She sought out Jesus Christ. She went searching for her Healer, and said if I can but touch his clothes! Her faith in God is what healed her. We have faith. God is going to do something.

Where the road leads

Where will the road lead us from here? I do not know. We haven’t gotten an official diagnosis yet, but soon, October 21, we will know if it is for sure MS. I titled this “Many Scars” because multiple sclerosis translates to many scars. The scars form on your brain and spine and are called lesions. From the MRI’s she has many on her spine and one on her brain. This would lend to the primary progressive multiple sclerosis, being the worst. But I do believe God is going to do something. What, when and where, I do not know. But whatever it may be, I know that it is only going to bring glory to His Name. We are adjusting to the way life is with this at the moment, but with treatment, have the hope that some things will be easier to live with and do. But until then, we pray. We pray and pray.