Wading through life

More positive news on the Chase front. I guess today he ate for the first time. Not too sure of the details, but Mom said something along the lines of him consuming and holding down some small amounts of soft foods. This is particularly exciting because the doctors were soon going to make a decision about whether to surgically route the feeding tube directly into his stomach so they could remove it from his nose and esophagus. I’m not sure if that has been completely ruled out, but hopefully.

Mom said he even said a few simple words like “yes” and “no” and tried to sit up in bed on his own. We consider all these miracles in their own right. To think that two weeks ago we weren’t sure if he was going to live or not, it sure is good and faith-building to observe his progress.

I would suggest that rather than ease off the prayer urgency and coast through the rest of the recovery, we push on with even more resilience. If ever, now is the time for our Lord to unload his glory and majesty and power upon Chase’s life in increasing measures. May it be proclaimed before our family and all the hospital that he is a God of healing and miracles. May the witness and testimony of an accelerated recovery bring honor to his name and usher Kingdom-expansion.

Well, after scraping bottom a bit this weekend and doing some soul searching, the Lord’s brought me full circle. My faith is renewed and I’m again confident and peaceful about Chase’s condition and the strength and resilience of our family to work through it together.

Mom and Dad and then I covered for Andrea and Grant today while they ran errands and spent some time together. We were glad to spend time at the hospital with Chase and allow them to escape a bit. Andrea says it’s hard to go home and spend such a short time there, only to have to return to Ann Arbor for another week. I understand what she’s saying, but probably don’t understand how hard it really is.

I guess this coming week, they are going to start Chase on a medication to increase his neurological stimulation. Doctors say patients can really “take off” when placed on this medication. We could see dramatic advances. They’ll give Chase this medication a certain amount of time before his therapy sessions to help him concentration and react better to the therapy. He can’t take it after a certain time in the day or he will be over stimulated and not able to sleep.

So, we’re all pleased with the progress he’s making, though for the record he is still unable to eat or strategically control his extremities very well. When I was alone with him today, I tried walking him through some photo collages, reminding him who the people were and what certain objects were. He handled it for a while, but then started to get irritated and frustrated. I’m not sure what was really going on, but it seemed to me that he wanted to say something or react to the pictures somehow, but couldn’t or didn’t know how.

I took that as a positive. If that was the case, it shows that those images were stirring something in his mind—either the names I said or the images themselves. When he started getting frustrated, I pulled the collage away because I’m certainly no professional in that area and don’t know what Chase is ready to go through at this stage. But it reminded me that he’ll probably have to go through some very hard and frustrating rehab. It will be frustrating for both him and us.

I don’t know for certain, but it seems like a lot of the information in Chase’s mind is in tact, but the network is jumbled. Two analogies that come to mind are: highway construction between cities and messed up networking between computers. In both instances, the primary points are ok, but the transport system needs repair. This takes time—and many of us Michiganders can REALLY connect with the highway construction example.

On a personal note, I don’t feel bad at all for grappling with my faith these past few days. I don’t feel bad for questioning where I stood on the whole thing or if I really believed. I don’t feel bad for wondering if God would really come through.

I want an authentic relationship with our Lord and authenticity in relationships often requires bickering and frustrating moments—moments where we question if the person is really who we think they are. And God can handle it. It’s not like I’m going offend him to the point that he’s going to turn his back on me and give up. Not that I think he should become my punching bag or anything, but I feel refreshed and rejuvenated after opening up to him about my questions and frustrations. And just like I asked in my opening paragraph: what does God do with crumbling faith? He gave me the desire of my heart: an extra dose of grace.

So what do you think God does about faith that’s beginning to dwindle—that is holding on for dear life after two weeks of struggle, strife and head-on enemy assault? I sure hope he pours out his grace anew, because mine could use an energizer.

It’s hard for me to pin-point what gets me down when I visit Mott to see Chase. It certainly isn’t his progress. It continues to be gradual, but steady. By steady I mean if he continues at this pace, he might be back where he was in a year or two. That’s the reality we’re settling in for.

Right now he is still being fed primarily with a tube, though Andrea bought him some chocolate pudding and put some on his lips and tongue for him to taste. The speech therapist got him to make clicking noises with his tongue and he gave a physical therapist the best hi-five he could muster.

He laughed a lot today, but we were told that it might not all be legit, or because of happiness. I guess stroke victims who suffer brain trauma often cry and laugh uncontrollably because their emotions aren’t completely in check.

Chase’s exit from the agitated state has been a relief to us all. He seems to be done tossing, turning and moaning. It was so hard to see him like that. When Mom, Dad and I took him outside for a stroll in his wheelchair today, he wasn’t restless at all and seemed to enjoy the clear skies and brisk fall weather.

I guess one of things that often gets me down with this situation is all the faith grappling I’m going through. I just don’t know what to think. The Sunday School answer is to “trust God” and “put your faith in Him.” I’ve done that best I can, I think. It’s just hard to maintain that level of faith-intensity. Maybe the ability to keep rolling in high-gear is what separated the Biblical greats from the regulars.

I now find myself starting to guard my faith. I’m pulling back a bit, bracing out of fear of the unknown. I still claim Romans 8:28, but not with the confidence I did the first week. What does that mean? Is my teetering faith undoing the promise-claims I made on the way home from Virginia?

I know why I’m doing it. I fear disappointment. I fear the blow my faith would take if I laid it all out there. There have been things—in times of great spiritual growth—I felt God was telling me. They rang true in my heart even. So I put some faith and action behind them and followed them where I felt they were going. Some were dead ends. Those hurt.

It’s amazing how only a few disappointments can offset an endless list of promises kept. I can know through scripture that those things didn’t pan out because they weren’t God’s best for me. But that’s not easy to accept sometimes.

And it’s not that I’m starting to feel Chase is doomed and won’t recover. I think he’ll be fine. It seems to be more of a personal assault on me. After I sent the enemy and his lies away for a while, he came back with more heavy artillery. I feel like a freaking megaphone of doubt is being held up to my ear right now, with some punk screaming into it that my faith is weak and that I’m failing my nephew, my sister, my parents…my family.

When I was outside with my parents and Chase, I just looked at him for a good minute or so after we parked in the sun. I started getting so frustrated with the situation. Mom had just led Chase through the kid’s song, “If you’re happy and you know it…clap your hands!” She had to do it for him. Just two weeks ago Chase was running around, tearing the place up, having long since graduated from such a silly song. Now he was struggling to hold his head up.

And then the lies started flowing. Why was I frustrated? Was that a sign of weak faith? Should I not be joyful and thank God in everything? Did I no longer believe in miracles? Did I ever?

I kept fighting for a few more hours while I was there and then decided I needed to go to church. I needed to escape a bit. So, I cruised home at 85 and got to Westwinds at 6:02, just in time for the lead worship song.

I can’t remember the songs we sang. I just remember praying for the Lord to minister to me, to rain down and remind me of His love; to carry my burdens. And he sure did. I was in tears by the first song’s chorus. Peace washed over me, but only for a moment. Then anger rose within me—righteous anger toward Satan. Anger toward his desire to destroy us all and steal life and happiness. Anger toward his incessant attack upon my mind. I was just tired of it all and cowered at the thought of wrestling through it for the next year or two.

And then thoughts for the rest of my family flooded over me. The thought that probably all of them are facing the same battle I am ticked me off. As if my sister isn’t wrestling with enough physical and emotional drain from this all, to have a stupid demon assigned to poke and prod her faith with lies really pissed me off.

So this is the battle; this is real life. Good vs. evil. It’s the world John Eldridge says is actually more real than the physical one we reside in. And that’s becoming increasingly obvious to me with the way these inner battles influence me in the physical. My demeanor can change in an instant.

I guess I should bring this personal therapy session to an end. The moral of this story is that I would appreciate prayers for my entire family on this topic: the faith struggle this has brought upon us. May the Lord teach us to rely on him in all things and to continually run to him for the truth in all situations. May he be our strength.

Over the weekend, Andrea had asked if I’d come back to Ann Arbor on Tuesday to hang out with her in the evening. “I’ll probably be getting pretty lonely by then,” she said. I of course obliged, seeing the opportunity to love on her and spend the quality time with her I had been praying for.

Tuesday turned out to be, in her words, “probably the hardest day so far.” It wasn’t that we had received disappointing news on Chase or that he had regressed. Quite the opposite, in fact. He had both a morning and afternoon session of physical therapy that tuckered him right out, leaving him tired and restless the hours I spent there in the evening.

I guess he performed pretty well in those sessions. He’s getting strong enough to sit up and support his head on his own. He tracked stimulation (a bell ringing at his side) and started swallow tests. All doctors continue to be positive.

But it was an emotional day for Andrea. Up and down with positives and frustrations. Though Chase performed well, he’s also pulled his feeding tube out twice, necessitating him to go though the insertion process a couple times. She said she couldn’t watch the second time. And one of the doctors was quite late for a therapy session. By the time he got there, Chase had already become uncomfortable with his surroundings and was agitated, leading to an unproductive session.

Andrea is tired, but continues to cling to God day-by-day for strength. It’s all she knows to do. She misses the son she knew, but is completely incapable of bringing him back. That’s really frustrating for her and our entire family. We all miss “the old Chase” and pray daily that God will bring about complete physical and mental restoration. But at the same time, we acknowledge that in spite of what the future may hold for Chase, he will never be anything less than our son, nephew, grandson and cousin. He’ll be unconditionally loved by us all.

At the end of the evening, I was so happy Andrea asked me to pray with her. I don’t know that we’ve ever prayed–just the two of us. It’s so weird, because God is answering these prayers I have had over the past few months: for restoration in our family, for a stronger bond between Andrea and I, for priority shifts in our lives… But NEVER would I have asked these things come about at the sake of Chase having to go through such a terrible experience.

Trying to make sense of this all just hurts my head and heart. Below are some things running through my head–some of them silly, some legit:

As I just stated, God seems to be answering a slew of prayers through this thing–prayers that had been cast far before this ever happened. Therefore, God appears to be using the situation to bring about good works. Now, how should I swallow that?

• Does this mean he’ll bring things back to normal in Chase’s life after these good works have been established? or
• Has Chase’s health and quality of life been sacrificed for a greater good? What could be more good that a person’s health and well-being? or
• Is this a case of “Be careful of what you pray for”?

Claiming Romans 8:28, I’m confident the first thought is true: that what Satan meant for evil and destruction, God allowed to happen with one of the positive outcomes being good works in our family; and that God will bring about full restoration in Chase’s life.

The idea of Chase’s health being sacrificed for the sake of a greater good is rather disturbing to me. Some would probably renounce their faith over it. I’m not sure if it’s unbiblical or not; I just know it’s unpleasant.

“Be careful of what you pray for”? I’m not really thinking this–it just popped up. I’ve heard it before and basically consider it hogwash. God has our best in mind. If our heart is pure and motives righteous in our prayers, God won’t say “Oooops, you prayed the wrong thing. I guess you’ll just have to live with the consequences.”

But that leads down a different road–one that I and others have traveled to some degree or another: what if I wasn’t pure and righteous (not only in prayers, but actions). Could God be using this to get me back on track, making me indirectly responsible for Chase’s condition?

I certainly think it’s typical for all to do a soul check when something like this happens. And I think it’s crap; it’s the enemy trying to heap blame on our lives so we become self-defeating. Did God cause it to happen to teach us a lesson? No. Absolutely not. Did he allow it to happen, with ONE of the benefits being priority-shifts in many of our lives? Probably. What does this all mean? We don’t know now, and may not ever.

All we know now is that Chase is on the road to recovery–and it looks to be a long road. Good has already come about from all this and more good is certainly in store.

In my humanness–and I think I’m speaking for most of my family here–I struggle with having to “resolve” all this in the end. 50 years from now, when I look back on this all, will I be able to see the good out-weighing the bad? If Chase fully recovers, it won’t be as hard. If he doesn’t, it will be tough.

Certainly, there are loads of other Kingdom-benefiting intangibles that we’ll never know about. I guess that’s why God wants us to have unshakable faith in his decisions–that they are always for our good.

You probably extracted bits and pieces of the situation from my past two posts, but I’ll lay it all out there now and give a good update.

Overall, I would say things are going well. Chase was much less agitated today. He tossed, turned, moaned and cried less today than Friday and Saturday. He found contentment in just “being” for much of the afternoon. I’m no doctor, but it seemed to be progress in my opinion. I even got him to smile at me a bit when I was hanging out with him in the afternoon.

Chase isn’t talking or eating or anything like that yet. They feed him through a tube, though that’s the only “thing” going into his body. He’s off all IVs. They said they might get him in a wheelchair tomorrow and take him around. I hope they’re able to. I think getting him out of that room would be really good for him.

One thing I’m discovering with all this is that it’s going to require a tremendous amount of physical and emotional energy—primarily emotional. When I left the hospital today—despite how positive the day was—I wanted nothing more than to sleep my stresses away.

I’ve found that even living by faith takes a lot of energy. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know I’ve been tackling this with a fair amount of ambition, claiming all the promises of God and backing them with a lot of faith. I kept it in high gear all week.

But as I tired today, I could sense my fighter’s spirit weakening. What if Chase doesn’t fully recover? How will Andrea react? How will Mom and Dad deal with it? What about Grant and Shelby and Celeste? Doubts and fears began to creep in.

And then the thought of having to maintain the battle for weeks more—probably months more—was discouraging. I want to be able to say, “I’ve fought the good fight; I’ve finished the race; I’ve kept the faith.” But I know it’s going to be hard.

Everything we’re reading on the situation says that progress is going to be measured in steps from here on out, not leaps or bounds. We’re likely going to have to LOOK for progress rather than notice it. It’s not the type of injury that just heals, but it’s an entire recovery process that requires the help of all family and friends.

So this is what life is all about: loving one another, being available to one another, sharing each other’s burdens, making the load lighter for another person. And I am now reminded that that is what God wants to do for our entire family right now: take the burden off our shoulders.

Help me give it to you, Father. I know I have another long week ahead of me—another week where I can chose to cave to pressure, or let you pull me above it and stand triumphant again. A week that will be full of opportunities to advance your kingdom—both in my family and in society—as long as I look for opportunities and make myself available.

And I can’t even begin to fathom what my sister is going through. Give her strength, Lord. May your grace be made perfect in our lives. May you be our strength when we are weak.

Show us the way.