Why Is It We Suffer?

I don't want to dwell too much on family issues but I thought it would be good to describe what my dad is going through as he is recovering from pneumonia. While pneumonia is a tough to deal with if caught during your youth, catching it while you are are 82 years old could be fatal. For some reason I had peace in my mind and heart as I was visiting him in the hospital I knew he would pull out of it.

He is not just recovering from pneumonia but he is dealing with Parkinson's disease. In fact, the reason why he got pneumonia is Parkinson's is making it difficult for him to swallow and so we think he asperated on food or drink and fluid got into his lungs.

Why is it we suffer? It is said a cat has nine lives and if so, then my dad has the lives of 3 cats. He's a tough guy who has defeated the odds of death in the many times and in the many accidents he's been in. The most famous I can think of is during WWII his ship, a carrier named the USS Bismarck Sea CVE-95, in the Pacific was sunk by the Japanese and he had to tread water for 10 hours until a destroyer came by and picked him up. He didn't give up. He told me he wanted to but something made him think to keep treading.

He's tough and stubborn and proud. It's how he survived in this life. But in these latter days these attributes are more of a liability than an asset. Several years ago his health really started to deteriorate from enduring prostate cancer treatment. It must have dawned on him that man is frail and he's one of them. And then a couple years ago he started having heart complications.

It is not only health complications but he needs to make hard adjustments in life. He is not completely independent anymore. He'll likely not be able to get his driver's license renewed and he hates that. He needs more help with his healthcare. And his wife, my mom, is struggling with Alzheimer's disease for which he needs to adjust his relationship with her. This is just a lot for a man to deal with all at once.

I pray for him that he will be endowed with Wisdom from God, and an assurance of his love even in the midst of trials. Why is it we suffer?

Psalm 119:71 says, "It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees."

I had an interesting conversation with him that went like this.
Dad: The war in Iraq is for nothing. The war in Vietnam was for nothing.
Me: Yeah. I just don't see how it will stop dangerous people from blowing up innocent people. I don't think it will ever stop.
Dad: It will stop when Jesus returns.
Me: You're right! That's exactly right! Do you mind if I talk to you about God?
Dad: No, I don't mind.
Me: Are you prepared to die and leave this world?
Dad: Well, I don't know with all of done in my 82 years.
Me: Well, it's not what you've done but who you know.
Dad: Who you know?
Me: Jesus. We need to know Jesus. Not just know about him, but to know him.
Dad: You know Julius Caesar? After they crucified Jesus he washed his hands. Why did he do that?
Me: (thinking maybe it was Pontius Pilate). He couldn't find anything wrong that Jesus had done to deserve death. So he washed his hands because he felt guilty.
Dad: Then why did they crucify him?
Me: Because he was sent to the world to die as a sacrifice for your sins and mine. We have to trust in that.

In these trying times I hope and pray he sees the Lord in all this.

No Boy Knows

My parents are going through a very difficult adjustment. Both are 82 years old and moving past the ability to live on their own. My mom has been suffering from Alzheimer's disease and we decided to place her into assisted living. My dad was toughing it out by living by himself, sort of. Actually one of my sisters has been visiting them in their home from once a week to fairly frequently for the past few years. And then my dad got pneumonia that put him into the hospital. With antibiotics and fluids he had pulled through. But because his "cold" lingers he also was placed into assisted living by the doctor's orders. And to complicate things Parkinson's disease makes it difficult for him to swallow correctly possible asperating on food or water making a relapse of pneumonia likely.

This has been a trying time for all of us. I've never before felt the frailty of man and such sorrow. But John Adams was quoted as saying, "Genius is sorrow's child." We'll see if he was right if some genius will spring forth.

While my dad seems to be recovering from pneumonia my mom is living a confusing and frightening life right now. I'm finding that she may have a bad dream or imagine some horrible possibility and her mind cannot distinguish the imaginary from the reality, the dream-world from the awake-world. One thing I know is she has a firm grip on her faith in Christ that has been grounded since her youth. We had a wonderful time together as I read to her some Proverbs, or some Psalms, or something from Matthew. She recited the entire 23 Psalm, with only a little help from me. And I would just listen to her as she would reminisce and I would marvel at the life she led.

While assisted living places are nice in that they take care of so many duties my mom finds it hard to find peace and quiet and so that the additional noise of the night staff makes it hard to sleep. I talked to her one morning and asked when she got to sleep last night and she said, "I don't know, I'm not sure. There's a poem that says, 'No man knows when he goes to sleep.'"

To see a mother decline in this way is difficult to experience. She has fears, and she cries, and along with it all she has chronic back pain. I tell you, this sort of thing shapes and molds a man and in the process squeezes tears out of him.

I promised I'd look up that poem on the Internet and read it to her the next chance I get. The title is actually "No Boy Knows". Read it and you'll see it's really great.

By James Whitcomb Riley

There are many things that boys may know
Why this and that are thus and so,
Who made the world in the dark and lit
The great sun up to lighten it:
Boys know new things everyday
When they study, or when they play,
When they idle, or sow and reap,
But no boy knows when he goes to sleep.

Boys who listen or should at least
May know that the round old earth rolls East;
And know that the ice and the snow and the rain
Ever repeating their parts again
Are all just water the sunbeams first
Sip from the earth in their endless thirst
and pour again till the low stream leap,
But no boy knows when he goes to sleep.

A boy may know what a long glad while
It has been to him since the dawn’s first smile,
When forth he feared in the realm divine,
Of brook-laced woodland and spun-sunshine,
He may know each call of his truant mates,
And the paths they went, and the pasture gates,
Of the cross-lots home through the dusk so deep,
But no boy knows when he goes to sleep.

Oh I have followed me, o’er and o’er,
From the flagrant drowse on the parlor floor,
To the pleading voice of the mother when
I even doubted I heard it then,
To the sense of a kiss, and a moonlit room,
And dewy odors of locust-bloom,
A sweet white-cot and a cricket’s cheep,
But no boy knows when he goes to sleep.