The Way of Perseverance

Count it all joy, my brothers
when you meet trials of various kinds…

James 1:2-3

Nobody likes this verse.

Well, it’s not that we don’t like. It is the Word of God after all. It’s just a hard pill to swallow. It almost sounds as if James is insensitive to someone’s pain and suffering. Like he’s dismissing the anguish trials cause as irrelevant.

What we want to do is the exact opposite. We want to “Count it all misery when your life doesn’t give you the ease and prosperity you want.” No. The life I expected.

A friend felt the need to give me a framed copy of this verse many years ago. Not sure why I just didn’t stick it away in a drawer so I could ignore those words. It sat on my dresser for years.

Those words beckoned me to meditate on them, to make them mine in my heart and mind.

Count it all joy…

The very first word forces us to categorize our trials. Trials are either one thing or another. Are adversities a joy or a misery? The natural and emotional response to this callous intrusion is to resolutely fling them into the Misery Bucket. But no, James expects me to place the misery in the Joy Bucket. Every time. He left no room for my feelings or desires to be a factor in this decision I must make. He left no room for argument. The audacity.

James 1:2-5 was yet unknown to me at twelve years of age. Maybe it was a good thing. Otherwise, I would have flat refused to obey.

Facing various trials…

My 12th birthday (in 1970) was celebrated in the usual way in my family. A birthday party with friends over, presents and the traditional cake and candles. The next day my dad had me helping him load into the back of his truck left over bricks piled out in the back yard. He was a home builder. We had just moved into a house he built on our 100 acres just outside of town. I was a daddy’s girl, liked being outside, so helping him was no chore. The plan for the day was to unload the bricks at the barn. After that, we planned to feed the horses. Then, we intended to go horseback riding. He unloaded the bricks and fed the horses, but we didn’t go riding. Picking up the individual bricks became difficult for me. My fingers muscles would not grasp the brick. But I didn’t say anything to dad. Being the kid, it was my job to unlock the gate and push it open. He then would drive through to the barn. By the time we got to the barn gate, I had lost all movement in my fingers. I realized when I attempted to manipulate the lock on the gate but couldn’t. I kept trying to make my fingers work, but they wouldn’t obey me. Dad finally got tired of waiting on me and unlocked it himself.

Dad knew something wasn’t right. He finished unloading the bricks, fed the horses, and headed for the house a short distance away. Mom had lunch ready when we arrived home. She had to feed me as my fingers were paralyzed. I was told to go lay down while they called the doctor. On my way from the kitchen to my bedroom my legs became weak and my gait unsteady. The paralysis from my hands must have been progressing down my legs. My mom cleaned up the kitchen. Then, my parents came into my bedroom to take me to the hospital. By that time, I had become completely paralyzed from the chest down. That was less than an hour.

The doctors at the Bartlesville emergency room knew this problem required specialists that our small town did not have. I was taken to a larger hospital in Tulsa. The team of doctors included a pediatrician, pediatric neurologist, orthopedist and physical therapists. The diagnosis was Transverse Myelitis. That is a blood clot lodged in the spinal cord. You’ve never heard of it. It was such a rare affliction that none of my doctors had seen a case of it. Etiology unknown. Prognosis unknown. Treatment options were limited to steroids and physical therapy.

Wanting more hopeful answers to their questions, my parents took me to the famous Mayo Clinic for a second opinion. Up to that time, the medical team had not seen a case of this in a child. The team confirmed all the Tulsa physicians’ diagnosis, prognosis and course of treatment.

The takeaway for me from both teams: there’s not much to do for you. Go home and do the best you can.

Joyful that I was now completely paralyzed from the chest down, including my hands?

Joyful that life as I knew it was gone?

No and no.

The world suddenly changed my category as a human. I was no longer in the “normal” category. I was now “abnormal”, “handicapped”.

One day at a time, one year at a time, God put my life back together. It took quite a long time, but He put it back together in a different way. I came home from the hospital in a wheelchair. A physical therapist at the local clinic worked with me three times a week on mobility and finger function. One technique to facilitate muscle movement was to use “e-stim”. A probe was applied to a selected muscle, an electric impulse sent through the muscle to elicit movement. The first time the physical therapist used it, he started at a very low intensity and gradually increased it. The intensity increased to a point where the electrical impulse was very painful and tears began to flow. When the therapist noticed my tears, he stopped. He had neglected to tell me I was to tell him when it got to be too much. I just assumed I was to lay there and take whatever pain the treatment caused.

Mom and dad worked with me at home every night per the physical therapist’s home program. Yet, no occupational therapist worked in my hometown. My parents did not know occupational therapists trained to treat hand dusfunction even existed. So, the rehabilitation on my hands and fingers happened through attempts to complete everyday tasks. These tasks included holding utensils, brushing my teeth, or donning my shirt.

I couldn’t write very well since I had very little movement in my fingers. I got my little sister to get me paper and pen and tell me words to write. I managed to find an unconventional way to hold my pen using what muscles that had spontaneously improved. Adapting to limited use of my fingers when writing legibly was slow going. Well, that went with anything I had to do with my hands.

I wasn’t able to attend school in my seventh-grade year as I became paralyzed the prior summer. A teacher would come to my home after he got off from school to teach me all the core subjects. I didn’t go to school anymore. I also lost connection with my friends. As a result, I spent most of my days alone. Mom was there, of course taking care of me, but she had a house to run and my other two sisters for whom she had to care.

After two years of therapy, I managed to get back on my feet somewhat. I had residual paralysis in my upper and lower limbs and trunk. This required wearing a brace (called an AFT for ankle-foot-orthosis) on my left ankle. State of the art AFO’s and shoes in the 1970’s are pictured below.

Do you know how excited I was to show up to middle school wearing that?

I felt like a twelve-year old girl Frankenstein.

I did experience some recovery in my mobility. Yet, the partial paralysis caused a significant impairment in my gait. I also had to have assistance when I walked.

I returned to school in my eighth-grade year, attending only one half of the day. That meant I made up the classes I missed during the regular school year in summer school.

That was fun.

Returning to school after being out a year meant I had no friends. Being sequestered at home for a year had dissolved any opportunities to be around other kids.

Thirteen-year-old girls don’t stay in one place long. Lost was the opportunity to be where girls congregated outside the classroom since I couldn’t go there. I was limited to interacting with whoever sat next to me in class.

That number was reduced by about fifty percent. Since my two siblings were girls, I knew nothing about boys. I didn’t feel comfortable enteracting with them. To make it even more difficult, I am by nature painfully shy.

Eventually I finished high school, college and graduate school. I graduated from Oklahoma State University with a Master’s degree in Speech-Language Disorders. (School-Another story about adjusting to places when you’re different.) After graduation I secured a job with the Bartlesville Public Schools as Speech-Language Pathologist (aka speech therapist). Those accomplishments were the initiation into the life God orchestrated I could not have imagined a few years back.

The platform…

Various groups in my community and in my church began asking me to speak. A couple of different local organizations honored me. I was named Bartlesville, Oklahoma’s Mayor’s Committee’s Handicapped Person of the Year when I was 24. Later, I was named Pilot Club of Bartlesville, Oklahoma’s Handicapped Person of the Year when I was about 30.

I remember receiving the letter from the from the Mayor’s Committee. I thought it was a joke. My parents were at my apartment that day. I showed the letter to them asking them what they thought about it. My parents knew the man that had written the letter and about that committee. They convinced me it was legitimate. How the committee knew about me was a mystery to me. I was confused why they had selected me. I was nothing special. I accepted but felt very awkward the night of the award ceremony. Surrounding me were four much older and accomplished honorees.

They had really done something.

I hadn’t.

Because God is gracious, He brought thoughts to my mind I need to know. Years later I remember thinking to myself: I am who I am because of two things. One is my God, and the other is my “various trials”.

Counting all my trials as joy. Well, that came slowly one Jesus-powered accomplishment at a time.

Have unexpected circumstances affected your child?

---

Do you have circumstances that you count as misery?

Is parenting demanding more than you’ve got?

Let me know how I can encourage you friend.