When it was "discovered," the Platypus baffled the scientific establishment. Reports of the existence of an egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal were deemed as sensationalistic or even fraudulent. Who could blame them? The animal looks like an accidental mishmash of parts that shouldn't belong to it. A mistake in God's creature-lab. Precisely the kind of mascot I needed for my blog.
Sometimes that is what a life feels like. Certainly that is what my life felt like four years ago. My career had taken an unexpected turn for the worse and so had my health. Bitter and stressed out, I began to experience a numbness and tingling in my left hand that wouldn't go away. The first doctor I visited declared it Carpel-Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) and prescribed a wrist brace.
After doing a little research on the web, I discovered that CTS was the lesser of two evils. My other option was not nearly as palatable. Two weeks went by and my numbness hadn't improved, instead it had spread to my right hand as well. A second doctor performed a nerve conduction test that ruled out CTS. Hoping it was simply a pinched nerve, he suggested I improve my posture and sent me off to a physical therapist.
When I started getting electric like shocks up my spinal cord, followed by brief immobility on my right side, I knew what my diagnosis was: Multiple-Sclerosis. The first Neurologist I went to was incredulous, declaring me too old (I was 38) to have developed the disease. Two days and ten-thousand dollars worth of MRIs later he apologized profusely as he confirmed my own diagnosis. I promptly switched doctors.
As I pondered the vast landscape of possible paths to eventual disability (MS progression is anything but predictable), I questioned God's affection and His intentions. I had been an outspoken Christian since grade-school. Growing up on a steady diet of "God's wonderful plan for your life" and "Jesus, your personal Savior," it became suddenly hard-to-swallow. I didn't feel wonderful and God didn't feel very personal, rather I felt like a discarded pawn in a cosmic chess game. I took the view that God cared more about His grand plan than my pathetic hopes and dreams.
During this period I found a measure of comfort in C.S. Lewis' short autobiographical A Grief Observed. Like Lewis, I was in mourning. He over the loss of his wife, I over the loss of a future without disability. I didn't stop going to church, or reading my Bible. Instead I approached them both with new suspicions, looking for confirmation of my nascent views that God was an impersonal deity who cared only for the greater good and not for the individual.
Unfortunately, no confirmation was forthcoming and slowly, as Lewis described in his book it was like Winter turning to Spring, my icy view of God began to melt and give way. There was never a pivotal moment, just a slow thawing. I had no explanation, nothing to which I could point to and say, "that's why I have M.S." Somehow I felt that even though I didn't comprehend how this might be for my good, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was.
As I struggled with these thoughts, our little dog, Max, developed painful stones in his bladder and had to have surgery. After the surgery came the obligatory little head cone to stop him from chewing on his stitches. The cone was big enough that it made it difficult for him to walk in the grass, so we would remove it when he went outside. At first he would resist having the cone put back on when he came back inside, but eventually he would just give you a sad look and obediently stick his head into the cone. He'd accepted his new lot in life and was moving on. He even learned how to use the cone to catch treats that were tossed his way (he's a horrible catch).
As I thought about poor Max and all he was going through, it occurred to me that this whole process must seem like some cruel torture routine. He had no way of connecting the pain in his stomach to the surgery or the cone on his head, and we had no way explain it to his little doggy brain. The analogy was obvious. Maybe there was a reason for my incurable disease, but one my finite mind could not possibly understand. My lack of understanding had led me to dismiss God as uncaring and impersonal. Instead I should have dismissed my own ability to understand my circumstances.
Like some people's reaction to the platypus, my initial reaction to my unfortunate turn was to declare God's plan for my life a haux and His love a lie. Surely nothing this obviously accidental could really have been planned, could it? And even if it had been planned it was clearly not to my benefit, was it? Although I still have no solid evidence to the contrary, I am beginning to believe in both.
"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." - Romans 8:28
No comments:
Post a Comment