A Miracle For Steve

"There is a time for everything...
   and a season for every activity under the heavens:

    a time to be born and a time to die,
   a time to plant and a time to uproot,
    a time to kill and a time to heal,
   a time to tear down and a time to build,
    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
   a time to mourn and a time to dance,
    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
   a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
    a time to search and a time to give up,
   a time to keep and a time to throw away,
    a time to tear and a time to mend,
   a time to be silent and a time to speak,
    a time to love and a time to hate,
   a time for war and a time for peace." 

~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

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When I was a small girl, our Sunday School teacher read the above passage from Ecclesiastes to the class. I don't remember thinking too much about it, other than to notice that the author was reminding us that nothing stays the same. When I became older, I think a couple of brothers wrote a song about this same idea, and made a lot of money. I wish I had thought to do that. But who would have believed that you could pluck a few dusty verses from an ancient text, and turn them into a Billboard hit? ​ Oh snap!

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Nevertheless, I managed to absorb the disappointment, and move on with my life...but 

not before I decided to take a harder look at those 2,400 year old verses, that seem to still have meaning for the generations that have proceeded from it. 

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I would like to tell you that I looked up those verses long ago, but I didn't. In truth, they didn't really ignite an understanding  within, until I had lived a few decades, and developed the art of perspective. You need perspective to understand what the author of Ecclesiastes is speaking of. You need experience, and you need a modicum of wisdom to perceive the simple yet profound meaning that the passage conveys.

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Steve is my husband, and I am his other half. I am his partner, his collaborator, his companion, his consort...and his caregiver. I am primarily his caregiver now, due to his life-threatening illness(es). He was diagnosed with End Stage Liver Disease (ESLD) four years ago, due to Cryptogenic Cirrhosis (non-alcohol). He qualified for a liver transplant and received his donor liver last spring. But...life doesn't always turn out as you planned, and the life we share together is no different. Steve is still fighting for his life. He's endured a myriad of common and uncommon complications that have left him a semi-invalid. Which brings me back to the sage wisdom and warnings of Ecclesiastes. Nothing stays the same. 

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It's interesting that I would distill the message down to the same understanding I had when I was a small child, but the words of the Bible have that effect sometimes, don't they? They can seem so complex, and yet a child can extract the author's meaning rather effortlessly. And for us--for me, that maxim could be written on the marquis that looms over the theater of my life with Steve. Nothing stays the same. To everything there is a season, a time, a cycle. 

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I don't know anyone who doesn't try to alter that pattern into one long string of "happies." It's what we always strive for; heaven knows it's been my lifelong passion. But the author of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there must be...balance. There must be change. There must be...pain, loss, sorrow and longing--not just the happies.

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Lately, I've come to understand the wisdom of this passage. Sometimes you have to allow the sorrow. Sometimes, you have to embrace the pain. Sometimes, you have to stop the world, and allow the sadness to wash over you. Because...it's just time. There will be plenty of time in the future for dancing, and healing and laughing. But one cannot exist without the other.

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Sometimes, it's just your turn to endure that which must be endured by us all.

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~ S.

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