Bear Your Share of the Hardship for the Gospel

"Bear Your Share of the Hardship for the Gospel with the Strength that Comes from God." (2 Tim 1:8)

My first reading of these words, conjured up an image of one pressed down like a beast of burden, passively bearing her load.  But, upon reflecting on Paul's words to Timothy, I hear him saying something quite different.  Second Timothy is an earnest pastoral letter from a veteran missionary to a younger colleague.  It presents a teaching suitable for continuing life in the world while still believing that the last days are imminent.  This injunction to bear your hardship while continuing your life in the world implies, I believe, a very active participation even when, and sometimes especially when, that activity takes the form of waiting.

Henri Nouwen's book, The Path of Waiting, speaks of a waiting for God.  Waiting is so different from wishing--there we attempt to control the future.  The active waiting which is modeled for us by Mary and Elizabeth, and is the waiting of Paul's letter, is based on hope--trusting that something will be fulfilled according to the promise.  "Active waiting means," Nouwen says, "to be present fully to the moment in the conviction that something is happening where you are and you want to be present to it."  Pay attention.  These are the words that help me make sense of this mystery, of watching a beloved one being stripped of his powers and of coming to realize that what is happening is that Jack is becoming more Jack, and I am becoming more Janet, and the Simons of Cyrene and Veronicas we meet and allow into our lives are becoming, by this, more of whom they are meant to be.

Our journey to this place of waiting, which has on many days been Golgotha, but which is also the Upper Room and Emmaus, began four years ago when it was revealed to us that Jack's difficulty in pronouncing certain words was not due to spastic vocal cords, but rather involved the brain.  As a nurse, I knew what this meant even though it was months before we had a diagnosis.  As we walked to the subway that afternoon and passed people on the street, I remember thinking, "What right do they have to be so happy?"  But, what I said, as much to myself as to Jack, was, "We don't know what is down the road.  Let us just try to live one day at a time, and how we do that will determine how we meet and live what is down the road," an injunction I was to repeat to myself many times in the following years

We set out in earnest on our path of waiting when his symptoms increased in severity.  There was a gradual loss of ability to articulate words, but more frightening was the increasing incidence of falls--down subway steps, in supermarkets, on the street.  I invariably found him in one or other of several emergency rooms.  The alternative was to curtail his activity and therefore his freedom which, at that time, he would have found unbearable.  For me, the hardship of allowing him this freedom was very heavy, in fact, scarcely bearable. 

Some of you might remember when we would come here to the Liturgy and sit separately, Jack in the front row, I, further back.  He always left home early and walked.  I drove or took the bus.  Some may have thought we were angry with each other, but I was "letting" him do what he wanted--to be on his own.  Yet I would search the congregation to determine if he had arrived, and sometimes I would become frantic until I found him.  I am sure Brian Donovan remembers the Sunday neither of us could find Jack and I returned home, still searching.  Later Brian called to tell me that Jack was in the front pew.  I felt like Mary and Joseph searching for Jesus.  Had I asked Jack, I am sure he would have said, "Didn't you know I must be about my father's business--that I must have the freedom to become who I must be--in my own way?"  Leaving each other space to be has been the hallmark of our marriage.  Jack never complained of his illness.  The present was everything to him.  His desire to be of service and to do as much as he could increased, but because he could not be understood he was forced to discontinue his teaching of scripture as well as his work as a buddy with the Gay Mens' Health Crisis.  This caused him great sorrow but he then volunteered to do ministry where he didn't need to speak--at Pax Christi he did the filing and ran errands.  Jack reframed failure--he simply moved on to what he could do. Mary Ellen reminded me of Jack's love of the Gospel of Mark--a Gospel of failure.  So much of what Jesus attempted failed, people turned away, they didn't understand, but he moved on.  And so, like Jesus, Jack moved on to the next waiting which Nouwen calls "the waiting of God."  It is to move as Jesus did--from action to passion to resurrection.  The central words in the story of Jesus' arrest are "to be handed over".  After being "handed over" he becomes the one to whom things are done, things over which he has no control.  As I go about caring for Jack, doing for him, I often say, "Jack, like Jesus, you are being handed over."  I hope that gives some comfort.

So, here I am, attempting to live and love one day at a time.  I am often bored by the tedium, the sameness of routine.  I am sometimes annoyed and aggravated by having to open my door and surrender my privacy in order to avail myself of help in this undertaking.  At times my heart is breaking, and at other times it is filled to overflowing with love and gratitude for the privilege of being on this journey with this indomitable person who is such a blessing and inspiration.  I am reminded of John Bayley's description of his marriage to Iris Murdoch, and I paraphrase it: "There is a certain irony that after thirty years of taking marriage for granted, marriage has decided it is tired of this and is taking a hand in the game. Purposefully and persistently, our marriage is now getting somewhere.  It is giving us no choice and for that I am grateful."

Finally, it is the being totally in the world of Paul's injunction to bear your hardship for the Gospel, and it is the waiting of Mary and Elizabeth as they created space for each other, and affirmed for each other that something was happening worth waiting for.  That is the model for our marriage.  Jack and I offer this model as the model of Christian Community to you, our Faith Community, our community of support, celebration and affirmation, the community in which we can lift up what has already begun in us.