After 16 years confined to an electric wheelchair with severe multiple sclerosis, something wonderful happened. A miracle. I was able to walk again. My early steps were shaky, uncertain and stiff—rather like walking on stilts. But it was a form of walking. As the weeks
passed my withered, weak legs began to grow stronger. 
In the first year or so, I walked with
two canes for short distances and only relied on a wheelchair for longer
distances or when exhausted. After many years unable to write or hold
a pencil with my right hand, or even cut my own meat at mealtime, I can now do
both and have regained the use of my right arm and hand. I walk with just one cane. Sometimes with nothing.
I remember that in the early days after my miracle happened, something unexpected happened.
Rather than being ecstatic about regaining lost function, I
became resentful that I have been seriously disabled for more than half my
life. As I said in a previous post, I felt swindled by life. I will never know
what I might have achieved in my career cut short when I was thirty-eight years old. I
lost years of being active with my children and grandchildren. I haven’t danced with
my wife in over 30 years. One of the last things I did as a normal father—before the
MS completely crippled my legs and right arm—was to struggle to walk my daughter down the aisle
on her wedding day. Shortly after that, walking came to an end for me. Serious neurological
disease dragged me through an internal, infernal hell on earth!
My resentment can be explained this way: The fire of neurological degeneration subsided and the dust settled. The terror of MS was finally not staring me in the face at close range, I looked around and the full weight of the lost time came into full view. Multiple sclerosis robbed me of 36 years—the best years in the prime of my life. What was left? An old man! Was this trial really necessary? Apparently, it was necessary. I think God is more concerned about my holiness than my happiness. God was always with me—even in my darkest days during all those decades.
My resentment can be explained this way: The fire of neurological degeneration subsided and the dust settled. The terror of MS was finally not staring me in the face at close range, I looked around and the full weight of the lost time came into full view. Multiple sclerosis robbed me of 36 years—the best years in the prime of my life. What was left? An old man! Was this trial really necessary? Apparently, it was necessary. I think God is more concerned about my holiness than my happiness. God was always with me—even in my darkest days during all those decades.
For me to ask God why more than half of my life has involved sickness and disability is to presume it should have been different. But why should I presume my life should have been without adversity or suffering? Throughout the centuries, suffering has been part of the human experience. As for the answer to my Why of suffering, it may be found where I least expected to find it.
There are questions for which there are no answers, only understanding. They are questions that focus on the deepest meaning of life and eternity. The understanding they bring usually involves tears before joy, then,
perhaps both, or at least consolation.
This is something those who have not yet suffered are unlikely to
comprehend.
C.S. Lewis once wrote:
“Can a mortal ask questions that God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow round or square? Probably half the questions we ask―half our great theological and metaphysical problems―are like that.” (A Grief Observed)
When I first encountered Christ in the early days of 1980,
all I asked was that He would make me more like him and less like me. That was
all that mattered back then. Is it all that matters now? I must believe that
is what God had been doing is making me more like Christ. It is a huge task for
someone as base and vile as me. Major spiritual surgery has been required. I
cannot say “Make me more like Christ” then question the major overhaul when it
starts to occur. If a purifying fire is required, who am I to complain about
the heat?! I must trust there is a purpose to suffering.
Pope John Paul II was acquainted with various types of
suffering. He said this:
“In order to perceive the true answer to the “why” of
suffering, we must look to the revelation of divine love, the ultimate source
of the meaning of everything that exists. Love is also the richest source of
the meaning of suffering, which always remains a mystery: We are conscious of
the insufficiency and inadequacy of our explanations. Christ causes us to enter
into the mystery and to discover the “why” of suffering as far as we are
capable of grasping the sublimity of divine love. In order to discover the
profound meaning of suffering . . . we
must above all accept the light of revelation
. . . Love is also the fullest source of the
answer to the question of the meaning of suffering. The answer has been given
by God to man in the cross of Jesus Christ.”
Throughout my disability journey that spanned decades, I have slowly discovered the profound truth in Pope John Paul II’s words in his
Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris
(On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering).
Should I desire happiness or holiness? My answer to that question will not answer why I have had a life marred by chronic illness; it will identify the state of my spiritual condition.
At a certain point in spiritual journeys, we all may discover that the only real happiness is found in holiness.
That holiness becomes happiness and becomes an eternal joy. At its foundation rests the divine
love of Jesus Christ. As John Paul II alluded to, I must seek the spiritual
maturity to grasp the sublimity of Christ’s divine love.
What is the purpose of my life? What is the purpose of your life? Each of us takes different paths but surely the purpose is the same: To become more like Christ.
Finally, as an old man, I see beauty all around me. What
a wonderful world God created for you and me. (Click on image below.)
