The reflection of the woman in the glass of the high school exterior door looked nervously back at me. Leggings and a sweatshirt, a baseball cap jammed onto messy hair, fighting to stand still, but really watching for the movement behind the glass that would signal eyes on the one for whom she worried. …for whom I worried.
An hour ago the call had come from an unknown telephone number…
“Mom, it’s me, Chase…Tommy let me use his phone. I’m waiting for my next class and I feel too dizzy. I am sitting against the wall and I don’t feel good.”
And now, almost an hour later after nurses and vitals and lots of words and weighing various options, I finally catch his reflection through the layers of glass across the high school commons and long hallways. But it is not his walking and talking reflection that I see. There is only the head of the nurse bobbing towards me as she pushes a wheelchair, Chase’s head leaning towards one shoulder, his normally sparkling eyes cloudy as if he can’t even bear to stay awake, as if holding his head up is a great deal of work right now.
And my heart – the same heart that beat so fast since the first call on Tommy’s phone – slows and drops with a sickening thud, making me want to cry and run to him. Instead, I try a deep breath. But I can’t seem to silence the refrain playing out again and again inside my head: not this again, not this again...
The glass door swings open slowly and I stow thoughts and pitch my voice upbeat, talking to him with compassion and distraction in equal measure. But the Chase who can work my last nerve with his constant words isn’t here right now. This Chase is faded and silent and somehow very small in the sterile rolling chair.
We assist him into the car, the nurse and I, and then as he sits listlessly, we talk through his vitals.
This, for Chase, is dysautonomia. His dear brain has fought so much for so long, that it simply refuses to fight well some days. Sometimes it’s his heart too, but more times than not, it’s dizziness and exhaustion. It’s stomach aches and lack of appetite and the inability to remember words or form them well. His blood pressure drops and we wrap him in compression garments and blankets, forcing salt chews into his mouth to boost his sodium and electrolytes to crazy levels, hoping that the spikes will trick his brain into correcting his balance. He doesn’t stand up and pass out like some POTS [positional orthostatic tachycardia syndrome] patients do, but as I watch him walk into walls, and practice holding onto everything for balance, I question to myself if this is any better.I wrap him in blankets and put everything within easy reach on the downstairs sofa he loves to inhabit, wrapped in his Chicago Bears blanket. And then my mind goes back to watching him rolling towards me in the wheelchair through the glass of the door and I get the pitching stomach again. How is this our life? How is this so overwhelming and somehow also not cancer?
And as clear as if a person stood next to me, I hear these words in my tired head, laid on my weary heart:
This is a season. This is not forever.
Tears flood my eyes. The whisper words are true and they hurt and comfort in equal measure. Once again we come to moment where there is no easy answer, no quick fix, but even in the frustration there is a precious truth:
This difficult moment? All the challenges? They are but a season.
And yes, it might last for an actual season like falling leaves or a winter sky, or perhaps even the whole season known as Chase’s life on earth. But it will still only be a part and not the whole.
And maybe you’re thinking to yourself: why does it even matter? I have that thought so many times. Why even try and wrap my head around everything that Chase goes through? It still hurts – whether an hour, day, or lifetime. Putting suffering into context doesn’t remove the suffering itself. Truth. But, if Chase’s bad days aren’t all there is – if his bad days are a part and not the whole – then we can persevere (and even grieve) with hope. Because the suffering season is not the end of Chase’s story.
The struggle is real. No pretenses. It’s flat out miserable on a lot of days. And I know you know it, dear ones. I know you have your own days and struggles too.
But for us, the hope is real too… even on the wheelchair-out-of-school kinds of days. Because our joy doesn’t come from a good day, but a good God.
It might feel dark right now, but the morning is coming, dear ones. And when it does come, our tears will once and forever be dried by a lovingly scarred hand.
A suffering season is not the end of your story… Hold on.
Moment by moment
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4ESV
