Webster & Wikipedia have definitions of
Marriage & commitment. However, if
they were accurate definitions, it would be a picture of my man leaning on
Jesus!!!
Imagine your life going the way you had
planned. You had a ceremony where you
said, “in sickness & in health, til death do us part.” However, you had always known health & so
there wasn’t a reason to be concerned about sickness or death. However, after a year of marriage, you lost
your first child to a miscarriage. Then,
after being married for two and a half years, your wife became ill, but no
diagnosis could cover the symptoms. In
the meantime, you started the adoption process and began searching for your
little one in S. Korea. “Religion that God our Father
accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in
their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James
1:27.
Then, after three years of marriage, you are
diagnosed with cancer. When you wake
from the surgery where the cancer was discovered and your wife tells you that
you have cancer, you say, “Cool, that means I get to be a cancer survivor!” Huh?
Most people curl up in a ball and cry, but not you! Your attitude is one of complete trust in the
Lord (Prov. 3:5-6) and how that encourages your wife!! To that point, you were declared cancer FREE
three months later!!! You were told that
you had to be cancer free for so many years before you could complete the
adoption process.
Then, a year and a half later, your wife’s sickness
got so bad that you actually passed an ambulance with its lights on, rushing to
the hospital to get your wife in to the ER.
It’s there that she was diagnosed with epilepsy! When she returned home from the hospital, her
vehicle for work was picked up and she’s not heard from her company since
then…most of her dear friends fell off the face of the earth and to this day,
can’t be reached, despite many attempts.
However, you are still there!
Seventeen years later!!! In a lot
more sickness, than health!
She had brain surgery to remove the part of her
brain that was seizing, to only learn that both halves of her brain are seizing
and so they can’t surgically remove part of her brain. As well, the docs said they can’t find the
point of origin of her seizures and so again, they can’t do much more
surgically. Thus, you had a bald wife
for many months with staples in her head that can still set off metal detectors
at the airport!
In the meantime, you learned that a child could not
be adopted until your wife had gone without seizures for a certain number of
years. Yet, you celebrate a few hours of
your wife not having a seizure, so years?
Really? Then, you and your wife
had a baby on the way! So exciting! However, a few days after your baby was home,
she became non-responsive and had to be rushed in to the hospital where she
lived for the next week due to “wacky labs,” but no real diagnosis!
Once your daughter was back home, you learned that
when she cried, your wife couldn’t hold her because the cry triggered her
seizures and holding a baby while having a seizure isn’t a good plan. So, the community stepped up and helped out
for a bit. However, you still weren’t
able to return to work full time because your wife still needed you. At the very least, four times every single
year, your wife had to be hospitalized.
Are you catching on to the sickness portion of this?
So, now we’ll jump ahead a few more years, and the
news did a story on a sweet little girl in Colorado with seizures and medical
marijuana. Your wife was President of D-FY-IT
(Drug Free Youth In Texas) in high school and was in pharmaceutical sales,
so she’s not touching a “drug.” As a
kid, you also learned to, “just say no,” and so you are saying it, too!! Everyone keeps asking if you’ve thought about
it, but it’s a drug. So, “No!” However, here you are a couple years later
and your wife is being hospitalized again, having a seizure every 18
minutes. The docs come to you and say
there is nothing left to do, they are just going to keep her alive. You tell your wife this and she says that she
knows where she’s going if she dies ( “For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16) and you have a child and puppies at home that would love a Mom. You have a wife that would love to be a
Mom. So, you sign all of the waivers
that you understand your risks and you take her home.
The following Sunday, despite how exhausted your
wife is from having so many seizures, you lead her spiritually and get her to
church. When you get her seated, your
Pastor sees your leadership & love and stops the service, has you share
what has been going on in your family, your wife sees you cry for the first
time ever, and then the Pastor offers prayer for your family from the entire
body!! At the end of the service, a lady
gave you a sheet of paper with her name, phone #, and “MD in Colorado” written on
it. You want your wife to live and so
you call the doc. You then plan to move to
Colorado, sign a lease, etc., so that your wife can take Medical
marijuana! However, after hundreds of
seizures and only CBD, not marijuana, your wife is improving. So, you come back to Texas. Your wife doesn’t sit still very well and so
she begins a battle with the state & federal government to get CBD
legalized. Since she can’t drive or
remember most things, you take her to each and every conversation with elected
officials throughout the state.
Did we mention at the beginning that your job is
commission based and so if you’re not working, you’re not making money. There isn’t a family leave program. So, each and every time that your wife is
hospitalized or needs a ride somewhere because she hasn’t driven since 2008,
you can’t make money. Thus, “….for
richer or poorer,” comes in to play, too!!!
Are you tired yet?
Now, let’s fast forward a couple more years. Since starting the CBD, your wife is able to
start coming off of the toxic pharmaceuticals.
She is almost completely off of one and only has 5 mg left of
another. The other is super duper toxic
and so she can only reduce it by 10% every three weeks. The smallest you can get the pill is 10mg and
you’ve broken it in half to be at 5mg.
So, it can’t get smaller & you can’t find a compounding pharmacy
that can help. So, for your wife to get
her dose lowered, she starts skipping days of taking the pill. It has worked just fine throughout the
previous two year journey of getting off of pharmaceuticals. However, it’s a very strong medicine and her
body decides to completely deplete her of sodium & she starts seizing for
three hours until the docs are able to get her intubated and in a coma. This lasts for an entire month. Yes, that’s an entire month of you sitting in
a hospital room with your wife in a coma and you are unable to work. Remember that whole richer or poorer,
sickness and health, til death do us part speech you gave over fourteen years
ago? Yep, you are sticking to it!!!! Wow!
She’s never really known a man to do that!!
We can now fast forward to 2020. The world went crazy!!! All of your sweet friends who would take your
wife to the store so that you could work are now asking to stay home to not get
sick. So, the responsibility is back on
your shoulders. You have a nine year old
who needs to be kept busy and a wife who just wants to feel normal. Since she’s in her 40s, started driving when
she was 15, but now hasn’t driven in 12 years and isn’t able to just run to the
grocery store when she needs something, but has to interrupt you, you are
definitely feeling the burden. The world
is going crazy in March because they are locked in their homes for a few
days. Then, it extends through the
summer and people are going even more crazy.
Yet your wife has been “locked in the house” for twelve years. If they want to get out & go for a drive
and not infect someone they can, your wife can’t just get in the car &
drive…So, you want to just take her places, but you need to be working. You still sacrifice your time, but that also
means your income.
Recall that your work is commission based and your first
year in the business, prior to your wife’s diagnosis, you received an award
that no rookie has ever won before because you care so much about others and
taking care of their families the way you take care of yours. So, if you can just work, you can care for
your family and not sit in the “poorer” category. However, you don’t define marriage by being
richer or healthy, you define it by unconditional love for a wife that is
living!
Husbands, love your wives,
just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He
might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present to Himself the
church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that
she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as
their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for
no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ
also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man
shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I
am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each
individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife
must see to it that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:25-33
So, as his wife, I request that you reach out to
Webster and Wikipedia and ask them to correct their definition of marriage and
commitment!!
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