How We Got Here…

This post describes, in part, the effects of a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. Any negative behavior on the part of my wife should be attributed to that condition. Any negative behavior on the part of myself should be attributed to my need for God’s ongoing grace.

My wife Janet and I were married in 1985, and for many years, things were good – which for me was a welcome change of pace. Before I met Jan, I was married and divorced two other times. Someday I may talk about those experiences, but for now we’ll start in 1985 when things were going right. While it was true that we had to move for work more than I would have liked, on the whole, life was good.

All I saw at first was small stuff. Her temper got shorter and she started forgetting things, but the temper wasn’t that bad and we were both getting older. Who doesn’t have “senior moments”? Unknown to me, our son was catching the brunt of the problems. During the week when I wasn’t there, the arguments were getting increasingly irrational, and she would at times be incredibly demanding, insisting that things be done in exactly one way. Plus if Janet asked you a question twice and you didn’t answer it both times using the exact same words, you were, “…changing your story…” and obviously lying.

By this time, doctors were getting involved because Janet had also developed a thyroid condition and (due to the thyroid problem) sleep apnea. In addition, the HD also beginning to cause physical symptoms, like her legs wouldn’t stop bouncing. The Ohio doctors guessed a lot about what the problem could be – some said it was RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome), others said that it was something else. To tell the truth, nobody knew what was going on – maybe that’s why it’s called a medical “practice”.

Eventually, I got a permanent job in Pennsylvania. Because our son had graduated high school that fall, he left for college and the remaining three of us moved on to PA. But by then, the physical problems were getting worse to include choking on food and occasionally biting her tongue.

We eventually discovered the truth when we went and saw a neurologist in Pennsylvania. After running dozens of tests and having them all came back negative, he told us that there was one more disease that we should check. He said it was called Huntington’s Disease and that it was a degenerative neurological condition. He said we should go home and look it up online before deciding to take the test. Through our research we discovered that HD has no cure, is 100% fatal and (to top things off) is hereditary so both our kids could be at risk. We also learned that the average lifespan of a patient after diagnosis was about 15 years.

In the end, we decided to go with the test – which came back positive. That diagnosis was 11 years ago.

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My name is Michael Porter, and that was the beginning of Janet and I’s new road together. Along with the medical changes came realizations that nothing was going to be the way we had planned. No golden years growing old together, no travelling to visit the grand kids – nothing. It was like our entire future had been stolen from us in a moment.

A while later, our son became engaged to a beautiful young woman from Texas. When my future daughter-in-law heard that I had done a little preaching in church, she asked if I would be willing to share a short message at their wedding. I said yes, and began considering what I wanted to say. They were getting married on a Saturday, but not just any Saturday. They were getting married the day before Palm Sunday.

As I read the gospel text for Palm Sunday (Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem) I was struck by that situation’s similarity to a wedding party. In both cases, there were revelers galore. Moreover, these party goers were all convinced that they absolutely knew what the outcome was going to be. The joyous crowds on that long-ago day in Jerusalem knew that Roman oppression was soon to be a thing of the past; and on October 20th of 1985 my new wife and I knew that we would be together forever – except we were all wrong.

So this is basically what I shared at our son’s wedding: At times like this we happily make plans and promise the future, but the fact of the matter is that the future is not ours to promise. Reality can intrude on our hopes and dreams in the form of illness, death and disappointment. In 33 AD Jerusalem, reality took the form of Good Friday crushing the hopes of political liberation but opening the way for Easter and a far greater liberation than the mere overthrow of Rome. In the same way, we have the promise of Easter that when our hopes and dreams fail, it is because God is brushing them aside to make room for something better.

After the service, the responses to my message were rather muted to say the least. It was, after all, not your typical marriage sermon. It wasn’t happy and uplifting, there were no hearts and flowers, and the new couple’s “sweet forever” was never mentioned. Our new daughter-in-law summed up the thoughts of many when she described it as, “…sort of a downer…”. However, I got a very different response from many others, specifically long-time married couples. As one old gentleman who had been married to his sweetheart for 55 years said, “About damned time somebody told these youngsters what they really needed to hear!”

Often when we hear the word of God being spoken from a pulpit we feel that the preacher has, through study and prayer, acquired some divine understanding of scripture that they are now sharing with us. While that sort of sermon does from time to time appear, the truth is often messier. Thanks to the Holy Spirit, the words that are spoken are often not the same as the words that were written. So in the end, the preacher often needs to hear the message too. Such was the case for Janet and I. Our wedding hopes were lying in shattered pieces on the floor, we needed to hear that God was making room for something better. We needed to learn a new kind of faith – a faith not that the future we have planned will come to fruition, but a faith based on the proposition that we have no idea what the future will hold, but that it will still be OK. We needed to have faith that something was being prepared, even though we had no idea what it was.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for days when you can’t see the way ahead…

“Blessed are You, Lord God, King of the Universe. It is right that I should at all times and in all circumstances bless You for Your many gifts, but too often I only thank you for what I know and understand. The truth is that even when I don’t understand the involvement of your hand in my affairs, I can know that your will is there working for my good. Even when I am blind to the blessings that you are preparing for me, I can know that the preparations continue. So I ask you God not to show me your hand, or reveal your hidden blessings. Rather, I pray for the faith to trust in you even when I can’t even begin to comprehend what you are doing. Amen”