Recently, I started to lose hope. I thought I was nearing the end of the hope roller coaster ride I had been on for so long now. Hopes up for the next new treatment, hopes down when it didn’t perform miracles, hopes up for the next one, hopes down, and so on. Looking at my situation realistically, I saw that I was worse than I was a year ago, a year ago I was worse than I was 5 years ago, and 5 years ago I was worse than I was when I was diagnosed in 1997. So I finally faced the reality that I was slowly getting worse. Nothing I’d done so far had dramatically made a difference or turned my situation around. Sure, I had had some good days resulting from some efforts I’d made but it wasn’t enough to make a profound difference in my overall condition.
So perhaps I should just stop trying and accept the inevitable. A new doctor confirmed my diagnosis of Primary Progressive MS which is the worst kind. I made an appointment with Wheelchair Services. Despite my sadness and hopelessness, I did, strangely, find some peace with the newfound acceptance.
But one night, as I sobbed with elbows on my knees, face in my hands, my husband said to me, “Dawn, if a sculptor sculpted you right now, it would be entitled ‘Defeat’. When are you going to get mad and just will it away?” Easy for him to say, I thought. But he’s right. Defeat means that the enemy has won. The loss of hope is detrimental to our health. I did still have a spark inside me somewhere that wanted to fight. Now my mind knew that but how do I convince my heart? How do I make that spark a raging fire? I prayed that God would bring hope and strength back into my life.
God has ways of showing us the answer to prayer if we’re open to looking for it. I was overwhelmed this week by images of children in need. I also heard heartbreaking stories of women in the Congo who have gone through unspeakable horrors. There is true suffering in this world that we will never understand, but one thing is for sure…
I. Do. Not. Suffer.
I am going to fight. I am going to pray and do whatever I can to not let this disease defeat me. But if I have to spend some days in a scooter, then so be it. It’s just more comfortable to sit sometimes. And life from two feet lower is still so good.
So, friends and family, please mark my words. Hold me to it. God may hear me complain but I hope you never will.
” Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
2 Corinthians 12:8-10
