PROLOGUE: "It's Not the Years, Honey, It's the Mileage."

PROLOGUE 

"It's Not the Years, Honey, It's the Mileage."

            

There are many thought processes that have run their course through my head and heart in these past few years. I can no longer hold back what I've come to realize. I see this as a responsibility as much as a desire to share. If you know anything about what my young wife and I endure daily, then you will know why I'm often tired and worn out, even on a good day. It is literally impossible to accurately convey the degree of suffering that Christa and I have survived for YEARS now; and still survive to this day. There is quite a miraculous love story that predates this dark season which we find ourselves in; and continues to get stronger than ever, despite sleepless nights and agonizing days that have blended into months and years (*please read further down if you would like to know a way that you could understand more of our story). We are still so young, but have experienced far too much. As love grows, so does the capacity for pain. Love does not make the burden lighter, but provides the motivation to endure it.

One example: An average night for me is spent holding my wife while she goes through either body racking seizures, pain so sharp and unrelenting that she loses consciousness, nausea so bad she shakes for hours over the toilet, or all these symptoms and more at once...Running up and down the stairs in our home, doing and getting anything, that might relieve a fraction of her discomfort. Her central nervous system is infected, and one symptom is sporadic, but severe difficulty breathing (air hunger). Having to give my wife mouth-to-mouth breathing is not uncommon. 
               

I do NOT consider myself a writer. Far from it actually. Now, my beautiful wife and best friend, is a born writer. Pure and simple. She can stir such deep emotions with just a paragraph of words strung together. Whenever she is able, I make sure to have her proof-read as much as possible the words I put down. Whether what I write is true or not, should only be compared and judged, in the light of the Bible. Because of this long and severe suffering that I have gone through, there is the "opportunity" to view stark realities and life's hard questions from a rare perspective. Apparently the best rule of thumb for writers to follow, it write what they know well. I will not try to reinvent the wheel, so I will write what I know well. And what I know, is pain and suffering. 

At first glance this will result in my writing being seemingly pessimistic, skeptical, sarcastic, and maybe even negative. But I hope that underneath such uncomfortable topics, you will see the underlining joy I have, despite the suffering. Not contentment with the suffering itself, as we humans do not naturally seek out pain, but rather run from it. I would do anything to take away my wife's agony. But as Survivor-man says "You can't choose your time of peril." I pray you would see the contentment and purpose I have, despite being directly in the face of overwhelming pain and sorrow. My purpose in life does not originate from myself. On my own, I'm a sad site. Every human is geared from birth for self destruction. In life, everyone experiences to some degree, suffering. It is universal. Some experience a lot more than others, and there are MANY ways of viewing and dealing with it. Suffering has the ability to refine, define, reveal or conceal who you really are. 

My worst nightmares as a husband have come true over and over again. Since we said our "I do's" 34 months ago (as of May 2011), the slightest out of place noise in the house sets off floodlights of panic in my mind. The feeling is comparable to a roll-over car crash where the husband is thrown from the vehicle and when he staggers back to the crash scene, he finds his wife pinned under the vehicle as her screams for help fill the air as the weight of the vehicle is causing excruciating pain. The husband is helpless to do anything. Imagine yourself as the husband and the feelings that might wash through you at that very instant. 

-NOW PAUSE THAT FEELING- 

That is how I feel most of the time.

This is the pain Christa is in, or worse, most of the time.

Why do I write? I want to communicate the truth that has been revealed to me during this time lived in these shadow-lands. That is it. The force that drives me comes from Jesus Christ. He completely transplanted the engine that was under the hood. That must be known up front. He found me, and saved me. I was not, and am not, able to save myself. I'm too sinful. I cannot take any credit for the life and truth I've found. The author is God.

         God DOES allow more than we can handle. No where in the Bible does it say otherwise. The Bible does however talk about being tempted more than we can handle in a letter to Corinth. "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it." This is very different from God allowing suffering. 

  If God made sure to never allow more than we could handle, we would not need God would we? The darker the background, the brighter the diamond shines. The love God has for me is what shines in the darkest times when all other lights go out. When I am truly unlovable. Suffering has the ability to show the reality of just how weak we are. God does not promise protection from pain (although I've found more often than not, pain is caused by our own choices), but He promises to never leave us or cease loving us. Romans 8 "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." And He says that is enough for us. 

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Paul A.D. 70. This writing explains Jesus Christ taking my debt of sin and paying for it in the only way possible: Death by a sinless human.

My growing up background was spent in a very loving and supportive family with three other manly-man brothers and a mom and dad who fulfilled their roles in ways you don't see often anymore. This environment allowed me to build my own faith brick by brick. There is a big difference between being exposed to the garbage of the world, and being influenced by it. But truth be told, I did not fully really grasp how sinful a person I was until around age 20. My years previous to that were morally kept "between the ditches", but something like blinders were taken off my mind's eye and heart over the span of a few days in the spring of '07. I could see much more clearly my desperate state and need for a Savior. To be honest, there wasn't a specific point or set circumstances that triggered this. 

Since then there has been a constant and distinct process for me of becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. I know I will never achieve this state of perfection, but that's not the point. The point is to have a perfect DESIRE, to live in a way that my Lord will be pleased with. This desire cannot be genuine without repentance. I hope the process of hating sin more and more, and loving God, and the things of God more and more, will never end. This is the PURPOSE of my entire life. It is the purpose of my marriage. I want to invest my life in things that last. Not something that will evaporate and that I will have nothing to show for when it's all said and done. This would not be possible without the Son of God fulfilling MY death sentence. 

Wedding day: August 16, 2008

Here is a short clip of what my young bride has endured for the better part of 43 months...

Watching the love of my life endure this torture daily has all but completely destroyed me. This video shows only a few of her many symptoms caused by this disease. She should have died easily over a dozen times...I'm honestly not sure how she is still alive. She has had two major car accidents since being sick. The first one, she flipped off a 30' cliff in a blizzard. The second we were driving back from medical appointments in Vancouver when we swerved to miss a large elk and flipped our car doing 110 k.m.p.h. 

   Christa had a miscarriage soon after the second car crash. Suffering has been such a close acquaintance for so long now. 43 months total for Christa now, and over 28 months of this for us as a married couple. There are countless horror stories in this valley of the shadow of death, all of which I wish I could forget. There are no "weekends" for us. No certain or promising time to look forward to. No guaranteed relief. My faith in God has been totally re-shaped as I have had the luxery of ignorance taken away. What has replaced it, is the stark reality that I am no longer safe in this life, just because I follow Christ. How I perceive God and what I ask of Him, is significantly altered from what I used to.

  For a few examples on how I view certain things very differently, I'll start with a section from the book of James: "Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him." I was always taught and therefore honestly believed that if enough earnest prayer was "sent up" to God then the sick would be healed. This has obviously not been the case with Christa's health, as she is approaching 4 years of sickness. After only some brief research I found out these verses are NOT talking about physical illness. The focus is on spiritual, relational, and mental sin, and repenting from it. So why then do most who claim to be Christians believe that physical healing is common place? The purpose behind the healing that Jesus did was to bring glory to God and prove who He was. Does supernatural healing still happen? Probably, but it is very rare.

  Another example is found in the last book of the Bible. Revelation 3:20 "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me." This verse is often used in explaining how one becomes "saved". John was actually writing to the church of Laodicea about spiritual reconciliation; NOT about Jesus knocking at an individuals heart. This verse does show His character, but it's context is obviously not focused on Salvation. We use it in that sense because the wording works for us. This can be very dangerous when it comes to accurately explaining the Bible. We should not be getting our truth from "worship song theology".

 The last thought I have that I will mention for now, is on how I view God differently regarding prayer. What should we, or should we not ask of him? I know everyone has their own opinion on prayer, but when I approach God while my wife is screaming in agony, I need to know exactly what to expect. I don't know of anywhere in the Bible where it says to pray for safety. 

Two separate families from different places start off on a road trip one morning. Both are Christian families who love the Lord. Both ask God for safety before setting off on the road. Two hours into the drive of the first family, an oncoming car who's driver is high on drugs swerves into their lane. There is a close call and the vehicles spin out, but no one is hurt. The second family has a similar scenario play out, but in their case they collide head on and a 5 and 8 year old boy and girl from the family vehicle, die in the ambulance on route to the hospital after the crash...

...Let's say you're a Christian, and let's say you were part of the first family. You would probably thank God for keeping you safe, and give credit to God to everyone in your circle of influence. "Praise God", "Thank God", or "PTL" (praise the Lord) would most likely be the lingo used. Now let's say you're part of the second family. What would your reaction be? Did family #1 pray the right prayer? Did they have more people praying for them? Did God forget about family #2? We must be so careful with the words we choose. Especially in relation to suffering. These types of questions drove me deep into the Bible to find out not what people thought, but what God had to say on issues like this. I will write much more on these topics in future posts.  

   *I recently put together a movie about our life since Christa and I first met, that basically tells our story. All the amazing moments, as well as the heartbreaking ones, are depicted. It is fairly graphic as it depicts some of the pain Christa physically goes through, so just a heads up if there are kids watching. Many people have seen it to date, but even if you don't know us it will give you as clear an idea as possible about our life story so far. Christa and I are always honored when someone watches it. If you would like to see it, please email me (jvanderham@msn.com) your postal address and I will send you out a copy of "Our Story" as soon as possible (at no cost to you).*

    Despite the emotional, spiritual, and physically exhausted state that I am almost always in, I have a strong desire to write about what I've learnt over these last years, most of which have been spent in the fires of long suffering. Some days it is impossible to sift through all that my mind and heart processes. Since we got married I have kept a journal which roughly records a lot of these personal heart wrenching realizations. Truth is rarely comfortable; and once it is found, one must submit to it. This is why truth is often avoided at all costs. Avoiding truth is usually done by "seeking", with no real intention of finding it; especially if finding it involves submitting to a higher authority. Seeking truth I have found, is far safer than actually finding it. 


 But when I will look back through the years at the end of my life, I will know there was truly no other way worth living!