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We shall overcome some day |
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Dear all,
I am sorry for a two-week's pause. I haven't written for two reasons:
First, time. There is no time. Nothing more to be said; it is a simple truth.
Second, I have been wrestling with the question of gospel, these days, and what it really means to say that death does not have the last word.
Before the accident, that made sense to me, as before the accident, the closest I had undergone suffering, on a personal level, was to endure the wrath of shame and grief of grievous sins against and by myself and others. But the pain of this event is so deep, so traumatic, so wrenching, and it invades every moment of my every day, that it became unimaginable that it would not be there.
Let me explain. I have lost the ability to experience unmitigated joy. Before June 19th, when I held my children, I would exclaim, "Now I have BOTH my babies!" and would be filled with such glee and a feeling of permeating hope.
Now, when I hold them, though I am still filled with gladness that I have both my children, and both still give me great joy, it is not unmitigated. That is to say that there is always the haunting feeling that something is desperately not right. Certain things that would have been the source of great happiness, don't, now. For example, due to Karl's inability to walk (and the Audi being towed four times--enough is enough), I bought a minivan, so that we would a) have a reliable vehicle; and b) not have to thread Karl in and out of a small and low door. This will be increasingly important as Karl gets bigger and Mom gets older. It will be a terrific car to use to travel to Oma and Opa's, or to head out to the Black Hills for a family camping trip; but guess what--Bill is not with us, and Karl is not well. That is bad news, news from which I can not escape. Yes, I have Karl alive, for which I am eternally grateful, but he couldn't play with his cousin Noah over Thanksgiving as he should have. This is bad news, news from which I can not escape. I take that reality with me everywhere, and it informs every decision I make.
Wednesday through Friday was typical for me: Karl threw up again, which has become almost routine for him within the last month and a half or so. So I began to wonder about pressure on the brain again, and so we went to his pediatrician on Thursday. She, too, thought that it would be wise to run a C-T scan, which we did on Friday. Before that, we went to the eye doctor, who said that Karl should begin patching his eye again, and have surgery to tighten the muscles. That will happen sometime in the next month and a half. Then we made our way to the C-T, a fairly frightening experience for anybody, let alone a brain-injured three-year-old who hadn't been allowed to eat since 6:30 a.m. His neurologist called yesterday with the results, and said that although there was no sign of increased pressure, there was all sorts of signs of diffuse damage. "There will usually be cognitive deficiencies" with such damage. Did she mean 'usually,' or 'always?' Well, to allow room for fallibility, she said, she says "usually," but it is indeed closer to "always." Most of his troubles will lie with processing and expressing information.
So.
So I pray uncountable times a day, "Come Lord Jesus." Appropriate enough for Advent, even more so since I embrace Advent every day of my life now.
But humor me for a moment: If Jesus were to come even this next second, what could take back the last six months? What could give me memories of Karl playing with his sister and new friends in the day care, or rolling down the hill in our yard, or Bill, Else, Karl, and I eating our lunch together in the Augie cafeteria (something we always did at the University of Regensburg), instead of Karl being fed through a stomach tube, dazing into space, and Else wondering how to play with this brother who had before been such a delight to her?
It seemed that either we would be graced with a sort of "Holy Amnesia," which seems contradictory to the God of "Heilsgeschichte," Salvation history, or, somehow, the pain would be remembered. That is precisely what I would rather not do. With any memory comes the grief, and then, in some small way, death would still have a claim on my spirit.
So I talked with others about it, seeking to be reminded of the promise, wanting to hear again just how it is that death does not have the last word.
(Please see December 11 Continued.)
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