Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Break It To Me Gently......



I loved that song when Juice Newton sang it back in the late '70's.  In Mike's life, that's how God has dealt with Mike when Mike has really been in tune with His will for him and his life.  When the ego has reared its ugly head and Mike decided those times that HE was going to dictate the turn of events rather than listen to God, well, things didn't end so gently.  I love that God knows each of us so intimately and tenderly that when it comes time to learn a lesson, if He knows that the best way is the gentle way, then he uses it.  He also knows that if He has someone with a particularly hard and prideful head sometimes His communication comes in the form of that wet mackerel smack up alongside the head.  In His loving way, of course.  :o)  Tonight I witnessed Him deal with Mike in what was such a kind way, and looking back, I know that Mike wouldn't have learned the lesson any other way.  Since late 2007 and up to the present he’s lost many abilities and functions he took for granted most of his life.  The losses didn’t come all at once, thank the Lord, and that was the only way God knew that Mike could handle the losses.  If you read them all at once it’s an overwhelming list.  If you spread them out over a number of years, as He did, there’s been time to adjust, and more important, trust God to walk alongside him.

When we found out in October 2007 that his eyes were hemmoraging internally, it was through a routine eye exam.  The eye doctor kindly and gently explained to him that it was diabetic retinopathy and we were sent to opthamologists in Redmond who began the laser treatments that the doctor here in Salem finished.  Sadly, the retina in his left eye did not successfully reattach to the back of his left eye after laser treatments and surgical reattachment, and his eyesight has dwindled to nearly nothing in his left eye.  He can see light, but it's like looking through a piece of cheesecloth.  No discernable shapes or features.  We are nursing his right eye along very gently.  He has bleeders and some days the blood has been dispersed in a way that he can see patterns like someone took paint on a big paint brush and flung it at a wall, splattering paint in drops everywhere.  That's what the inside of his eye looks like on a bad day.  When the blood is absorbed into the body, or has settled on the bottom of his eye, he can see quite clearly.  Just one more thing to have to adjust to, and for the most part, he's handled it with grace.  If he wants to read anything it’s with magnifier glasses and enough lights in the room to land a 747 in the middle of our street.

We’d been out all day long running errands.  He drove to the hospital today for his IV round of meds.  For whatever reason he did that today, he did it, and he felt really good about himself.  He felt like he'd accomplished something important to him just for this day.  I took over driving and we headed up to Portland for the first errand and then headed down to Newberg to accomplish the second errand.  As we were leaving Newberg I thought I was headed down a familiar road.  My once-familiar road had taken a turn I didn’t want and we found ourselves on a very dark, very winding, very hill-and-valley filled two lane road, in a rainstorm, in the dark.  To begin with my night vision is tolerable if you have a lot of lights.  I started to panic and found a side road to turn off onto so I could turn around to head the other direction.  Not the wisest decision on my part and after I nearly drove us into a raging ditch about four feet deep with churning water and a culvert, Mike said these words:  “Get out, I’m taking over.”  And I knew not to argue.  We switched sides, headed back into town, got on the RIGHT road, only to find it wasn’t a whole lot better.  He was obviously having trouble seeing and bells and whistles-no, GONGS, are going off in my head.  About 20 seconds into this I’m praying like a madwoman.  

“Please, please, stop on the side of the road, I know where we’re at, I can do this.  Just stop.”  Lord, stand on my tongue, please, because if you don’t, I may say something that will hurt him and he doesn’t need that.

“I can handle it.  I know what I’m doing and I’ve got it under control,” and things got uglier.  It’s POURING, we’re on a two-lane road and it’s looking really bleak.

“Mike just let me drive home.  Please.”  

We turned onto the road that would eventually lead us back to I-5 and he asked me to find a spot on the side of the road where we could switch.  “Just keep your eyes on the shoulder and find a spot where the truck can get off the road and neither of us will be hit when we get out.”

That had to be the hardest request he’s ever made to me.  It was tantamount to him saying, “I thought I could do this, but my eyesight has gotten to where it will put us all in danger and I have to gracefully acknowledge I can no longer do this.  I can’t drive at night anymore.  I’m done.”  THOSE words didn’t need to be said outloud, the actions spoke, and all that was needed from me was to get out and around to the driver’s side and get back on the road.  He was hurting and crawled into the passenger seat.  Thank God it was dark and no one had to see faces of hurt and questioning.

We found the safe spot, made the change, and continued on to I-5.  Once on the freeway, I reached over to take his hand.  I gave his hand a squeeze and he gently squeezed back.  We didn’t have to say anything and nothing needed to be said.  He didn’t need a self-righteous shrew hammering home that once again, we found something he couldn’t do and blah blah blah.  I didn’t want to sound like my mother.  He’d stated the problem himself as he saw it, he’d acknowledged that yet one more thing he’d done all his life was now done.  It was at an intersection in Keizer where he said it out loud.

“He’s taken one more thing from me.  I can’t see at night to drive safely.   I don’t have much else to give up.  Why is this happening?”  

At the time, I had no answers, and sometimes, even if you DO have the answer, you just need to keep quiet until the right time to say something.  I cannot stress this enough:  Men’s hearts are SO incredibly tender.  They want to be 10 foot tall and bulletproof in our eyes.  Too often our words scramble out and the words hurt, demoralize, tear down, rupture, and destroy the heart of the man we profess to love.  Sometimes the best thing to say is…..NOTHING.  God can’t fix or repair what YOU are standing in the way of.  Just love them where they are at.

After we got home and had dinner, God showed me that He may have taken Mike off his feet and is limiting his eyesight, but this downtime has rendered, after a lot of searching, great ministers and scholars of the Bible, and the hours he would have otherwise pursuing worldly interests have been spent hearing good teaching and being able to share that with others.  Along with that searching has been a thirst to hear more and learn more of God’s Word.  I’ve often thought he’d make a wonderful pastor, but he’s adamant that unless God grabs a Sharpie marker and scrawls on the wall, “Mike, I want you to be a minister,” that isn’t something he will pursue.  Too many times men pursue the ministry out of ego rather than a total desire of the heart to please God.  If God has eliminated the worldly things from his life and has put him in a position of being in a solitary and peaceful place to listen to teaching, then God will provide the next step for Mike.  And after tonight, that next step definitely does not include anything that would need nighttime driving, but thanks to God, He’s given Mike the love and security to be able to say, “I can’t do that anymore, it doesn’t mean I’m any less a man, it just means I’m MORE dependent on my Father.”

And I’m pretty sure those are words very pleasing to his Father’s heart.

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