[On Wednesday’s, I get to share the platform with Webster Hunt. This is always the most popular post of the week, and for good reason. If you don’t know Web, follow him on Twitter.]
Yesterday my wife had a doctor’s appointment. It was your standard “go over bloodwork, symptoms, and possible meds to help this illness along” that she has once every month or so. It was on the tail-end of a hospital stay gone less good than it could have, so we were both anxious to hear what the her autonomic doctor had to say. I was waiting on her phone call.
On the other end, her end, things were going like they normally did. One of the ladies from our local body had arranged to drive her to and from the appointment, and though she arrived later than she usually does, her doctor came to her before her appointment and asked if she’d speak to her previous patient in a support kind of way – which my wife gladly agreed to. The doctor wheeled her back to the room and brought the patient and her mother in, where Sheena shared about the severity of her illness, how the doctor had been so diligent and, at times, successful in her treatments, and even about our daughters and what we had to do because of her illness.
The call I got from her was excited – she was honored to have been considered by her doctor to encourage another patient with a less severe form of dysautonomia. She always has that attitude when it comes to helping others that way.
There’s something to the way she suffers with her illness so well. She’s content to say and believe that her illness is the will of God for her – because, as she says, she’s obviously sick, so it’s obviously what He wants – and though it is evil, and it destroys her body, that He means it for good, and she says as much to Christians and non-Christians. Understanding her illness this way has allowed her to speak more firmly about the Gospel and about Jesus to people who would likely not otherwise hear her. There’s just something about affirming the goodness of God in the midst of suffering that gets people’s attention.
Another way she suffers well is that she continues to be Christlike wife to me. She seldom complains though she hurts all the time, and when I need to talk with her about some trouble on my heart, she listens and helps me work through it. When I sin, she rebukes me and expects me to repent from those things. In whatever ways she is limited, she finds other ways to show her love for me to me. Like tonight – she’s letting me do something I like doing when she could claim her rights to my time and energy. I justify it to myself by saying “Well, I’m blogging about you” and continue on. I digress.
There are so many ways that her own sanctification has affected mine. She has been a constant means of grace to spur me on toward Christ, toward holiness. Especially in her illness.
So I blogged about my wife today because she impresses me. And to quote the great philosopher Dana Carvey (I joke) “There’s a lady I know/And if I didn’t know her/Then she’d be the lady/I didn’t know.”
I don’t want to have not known her. I can’t imagine it.
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