Giving Up

I’m home now, but I am different: I left a normal mobile person and returned a semi-invalid. So the question is: how is this going to work, with a big family and all?

The answer: just fine, as long as I give up.

By giving up, I mean letting go. Before I was engaged in the family: making sure my little boys did their homework and got to bed on time, coordinating all the details of our busy life with Angela, trying to keep some order in the place so all of us didn’t fall down the rabbit hole together, finding money every month to pay the bills and buy groceries for all these teenage boys, etc.

That is history. Now I cannot get out of bed by myself, I use a urinal, if I want a tissue and none is nearby, I have to call for someone. I cannot go look for food in the refrigerator. My wife has to dress me.

Although I am engaged in bigger family decisions, now most of the time my attitude to much that goes on is, “Whatever you think best, dear. Do that.” It’s good for a proud person like myself to say that and mean it; I suggest every guy go through what I am going through at least once in his lifetime. We want control and to have control, so to yield control to someone else is very, very good for us – at least for me.

Along these lines, I had a good July; I had energy enough to hike a small mountain in the Adirondacks with my younger boys, and I did other active, physical things. So after my radiation in April, it seemed that I was getting my energy back. I was looking forward to a good August and hoped to do some fun things at the end of summer with my younger boys and also to expand my little IT business in the fall of 2018.

My goals now are somewhat less grandiose. I would be happy – yes, ecstatic – if I could just get out of bed and use the bathroom without help. Just to walk down the hall by myself: how awesome would that be! To walk into the kitchen and find some food for myself without bothering anyone to get it for me. Wow!

We’re talking about giving up again. Letting go of what we thought our life might be and getting on with the life that God has for us. It’s a good life, but the key is to give up and let go.

This is not like some zen-like signage in a gift shop meditation exercise, but rather the result of a fire that has taken away my body and bent a strong human will, but I have to be willing for that will to be bent. If I am, all is well; if not, then not, and there will be bitterness.

It’s amazing what God has to do sometimes to turn us around.