Four years ago today my organization canceled its largest-ever statewide conference, just four days before it was to begin, due to the emerging pandemic.
Today is the start of this year‘s conference. And we have returned to same venue for the first time since the “Greatest Conference That Ever Wasn’t.”
And when I opened my daily devotional this morning (New Morning Mercies, by Paul David Tripp), I see my note in the margin from the last time I used this book four years ago.
Tripp’s particularly timely reminder for this day: “You are always facing the unexpected. Almost daily you are required to deal with something you wouldn’t have chosen for your life…“
Today, and every time you face the unexpected, I wish you grace.
Diagnosed with schizophrenia in his mid-twenties, my brother Brian battled depression, hallucinations, voices, anxiety, and highly threatening psychotic episodes in decades of discerning what was truly real in his reality.
As if that weren’t enough, brain cancer inserted its tentacles into his frontal lobe. He celebrated his fiftieth birthday with the first of three surgeries to counter the cancer’s terrible, inevitable advance.
On a recent Christmas evening surrounded by our family, a series of seizures convulsed his central nervous system in a hostile takeover of mind and body.
The off-kilter, razor’s edge balance of a medicated life disintegrated into a chemically-induced, frantic free-for-all for his future.
Forced to abandon his already limited lifestyle, his mobility, his interests, his hobbies, and his home, Brian’s horizons shrank to a double room in a nursing home with a single window.
His is not the archetypical story of Exalted Hero, Exemplary Leader, or Inspirational Honcho.
Yet…
Brian the mild-mannered gentleman, Brian the good-humored wit, Brian the patient and enduring soul, was ultimately the unlikely overcomer of some of life’s harshest punishments.
Though his accomplishments may be meager trifles measured against society standards; though his aims were modest and he consumed, perhaps, more than he contributed, his life, tragic as it appeared, was neither futile nor impotent.
Perhaps like many other so-called burdens to society, his purpose was intended for our collective benefit. Perhaps he was singled out to demonstrate to all of us how to bear an unfair burden. Maybe his gift of humor in the midst of a lifetime of suffering was to show us how to accept grace and how to give grace. Feasibly his sacrificial mission provided a broader perspective on our own discomforts, disappointments and disabilities. Patience through the worst of times? Decisively. Perseverance in perpetual pain? Resisting the ravages of mental and physical illness? Enduring when there simply is no other option? Emphatically yes, yes, and oh, yes!
I am sorry I came to recognize these realities late. But I rejoice in witnessing his ultimate triumph in carrying these unpleasant duties to completion at the finish line.
And to hear our Father say, “Well done, My good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your reward prepared in advance for you!”
