Late 2018 was a low point for me. After more than three decades of aggressive multiple sclerosis (MS), I was at a point where three out of four of my limbs were affected by paralysis. I was at end-stage MS; My family expected my next address would a nursing home—or worse! It was the year my disease forced me to stop speaking across North America to advocate disability inclusion and the sanctity of all human life. But travel slowly had become too difficult. It came to an end after a keynote speech I delivered to Dubuque County Right to Life group in Iowa. The day before my address, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law America’s strictest abortion restriction at the time. It banned most abortions after a fetal heartbeat could be detected (around six weeks of pregnancy). It was into that momentous, celebratory atmosphere event that I arrived. It was on the flight home that I encountered a slew of disasters including being locked out of the O'Hare airport late at night! (I won't mention the airline, but their initials are AA.) I arrived home so exhausted that my wife (God bless her) told me I was at the end of my speaking days abroad. She stated what I already knew. In November 2018, my wings were clipped and I descended into a deep depression. I lost my sense of purpose. Wrong!
One evening I was at the Catholic Church at the top of hill that Beaumont is named after.[1] I sat paralysed in my electric wheelchair, praying before the Blessed Sacrament. I didn’t ask the Lord for a cure to my MS—I had done that for many years. My disease worsened. I knew there was a reason for it so I prayed for time: time to go with my wife LaRee to restaurants on our date-nights without worrying whether the place had a lip at the entrance that would stop my wheelchair from entering; time to walk with LaRee, and dance with her just as we had done before the MS stripped it all away; time to smile at an old friend face-to-face and shake his hand. In short, some time to live without fear about my creeping paralysis and contraptions associated with serious physical disability. Over the coming days or weeks (it's all a glorious blur) something profound began to happen to me.
As I slept one night I was awakened to a presence. It was as real as if LaRee was standing in my room. It was Him! Something told me—not in words but an understanding, a “knowing”, to touch my little finger with my thumb. I hadn’t been able to do that in years. But the divine presence told me to do it, so I tried. My thumb did touch my little finger, then the other three. I did it again, and again, but I did not immediately tell my wife, fearing the newly restored ability was simply a momentary neurological blip that would disappear.
The next morning, I whirred my electric wheelchair to the kitchen and noticed a pen and an envelope sitting on the table. Slowly, hesitantly, I reached for the pen and was able to pick it up. Surprise! Then came the test. Could I write something on the envelope? Yes! I was able to easily write my name. It was the same handwriting style as it had been decades earlier. It was one of those brief eternal moments when one lives a lifetime.
When LaRee awoke a few hours later and entered the kitchen, still bleary eyed, she poured her first coffee of a new day, I said: “LaRee, watch this.” I wrote my name again easily and clearly. Her eyes widened and she stopped mid-sip! “What?!” Tears welled in her beautiful brown eyes and she started to cry. As those tears ran down her cheeks, she asked, “When did this happen?” her voice quivered with emotion. She was unable to comprehend what she just witnessed.
“Last night about 2:00 in the morning!” I replied. “I was awakened by something in my room. It was ethereal yet more real than if it was you. Something empyrean, so graceful, pure and emanating a divine perfect love that could not be of this world! It was—how should I explain this? — a divine presence that came to me, not from across my bedroom but from across the ages.”
For a moment I thought my words went too far to be believed. I expected LaRee to look at me thinking MS was finally affecting my brain’s little grey cells. I looked down with embarrassment, then I sheepishly I looked at her, expecting a look of incredulity. She simply accepted what I told her.
You see, throughout our lives together[2] we have experienced a number of divine interventions. She simply accepted what I was saying as someone who has personally experienced the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that the world does not, cannot, and stubbornly will not allow to enter their lives.
“However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.”[3] — Romans 8:9, NRSV
A short time later, I was sitting my wheelchair at the kitchen table again. It was early morning and I was looking out the kitchen window into the backyard watching sparrows’ flitter around our bird feeder My attention was drawn to a walker in the corner of the kitchen that belonged to my recently deceased mother-in-law. Unexpectedly, that same divine sublime presence filled the room. I was told to stand and walk with that walker. It was not some vague figment of my imagination or wishful thinking of a man with atrophied legs from years of paralysis. The message clear, unambiguous. The Holy Spirit was speaking to a crippled and sinful man who was shrinking back into his wheelchair with shame. Like Peter meeting Christ and fearfully falling to his knees before Jesus: “Go away Lord; for I am a sinful man.”[4] That was my initial reaction to the vivid and evident presence of the Holy Spirit in the room. “Stand and walk with that walker.” How was I supposed to do that? I hadn’t walked in many years, my legs were atrophied and weak. I doubted they could hold the weight of my body! But the paraclete was with me, encouraging me, and so I tried and did stand, albeit with trembling legs. I grabbed the handles of the walker. I walked five steps! then did it again, then ten steps. Thunderous wonder!
I went back to my wheelchair and sat in it. LaRee was still sleeping. I called to her to come and see what I could do. Groggy, bleary eyed and irritated at being awakened, LaRee came to the bedroom door. “What!” she grumbled. Undeterred I said, “watch.” I got out of my wheelchair and walked with the walker toward her. Her bleary eyes grew wide in shock and she literally staggered back into the room. “What?! How?!”
I didn't know how it happened, it just happened after visiting Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
That was the beginning of seven wonderful years of me walking unaided in the house and going up and down the stairs. I only used a cane when I was tired from walking, and a scooter for long distances. LaRee and I would go to restaurants on date night without worry.
That winter, on a cold Canadian February night, LaRee and I did dance. Just the two of us. We slow danced in our living room to the last song we danced to years earlier when we suspected we would never dance again: Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady. She put her head into my chest and wept because she was was in awe but also afraid we might be coming to the end of our rainbow, just like the song said, not knowing where the MS would take us. Holding each other close, our hearts became one and she melted into my chest, knowing we had not yet come to the end of our rainbow as feared because I had advanced, end-stage MS.
Now those days free from my wheelchair are ending after seven and a half years. God gave me the time I prayed for. He gave us seven sweet years to go on date nights without facing barriers, to hold each other on winter nights without a cold steel wheelchair to scare intimacy away.
We are 73 now. Yes, our able-bodied honeymoon seems to coming to a close. It saddens us but we are also grateful. God gave us those treasured seven years. We are prepared for whatever is in store for our future. There is something we are still to learn. God has always been in control, drawing us into a fuller understanding of love (both human and divine).
I will praise God again from a wheelchair.
MDP
