Of all the people I’ve ever known, I think my dad understood and experienced Jesus’ assurance that in this world we can expect troubles, trials, and tribulation (John 16:33)! Addressing this reality in a previous devotion, it seemed timely for me to retell my father’s story.
Dad was just an ordinary, normal guy whose life was filled with extraordinary problems! Allow me to present his life in outline form.
For Dad, the trouble began at birth: The stock market crash of 1929! From there it was pretty much downhill all the way:
- Contracted whooping cough as a child: Doctors literally OD’d Dad with radiation therapy, blackening his skin. This no doubt explains why Dad, in his mid-50s, was diagnosed with leukemia.
- When living in San Francisco, at about age five, Dad lost control while riding his tricycle on a steep street and slid, chin first, into an intersection. He told me the doctor attending his wound used so much cotton on the wound he looked like Santa Claus (his chin wound was still visible as an adult).
- When living as a youth in Santa Ana, Dad ran across his backyard in the dark and tripped over his bicycle — and the handlebars punctured his skin, barely missing his lung.
- While weightlifting in high school, Dad was attempting to curl 140 lbs. (!) and threw his back out — resulting in serious, lifelong back problems which included major surgery in the late 1960s (with complications!).
In addition to these things, note the following:
- Hernias — eight hernias, seven were double hernias
- High blood pressure
- Diabetic
- Multiple skin cancers
- Disability retirement at 49
- Broadsided on the Pala Road just east of Temecula, CA which put him on crutches for months
- Carpel tunnel syndrome
- Coped with Mom’s frequent bouts of pneumonia and pleurisy most of their married life
- Began manifesting clear signs of Alzheimer’s disease at 56 — and died ten years later (1996)
Believe it or not, there is quite a bit more I could share, lots of “little” things that occurred, all the time.
Was my dad some kind of irresponsible, lazy, low-life, boozing, womanizing bum who deserved all this? I should say not! Fact is, most everybody adored Dad! In fact, sometimes my friends would come over just to see him! No, you’d be hard-pressed to find a finer man anywhere.
Here’s the truly amazing thing about Dad: I never heard him complain about how awful and unfair life was to him! I never heard him say “Why me?” or “I just want to quit!” Not once! You see, my dad chose to live with his afflictions, accepting the trials he endured as part of living in a fallen, broken world. It’s the way life was always going to be for him and so he was never caught off-guard and he determined to get through it no matter what.
It will serve us well if we can accept the fact that problems are a part of life. We can’t escape it. Disappointment, betrayal by those closest to us, failure, loss, sickness — these are normal and to be expected. It’s all because of the nature we have, the world we live in, and the enemy of our souls. It’s most fortunate for us Christians that we have sure promises, in the Bible, that every moment and every incident in our lives come only by Divine sanction. Everything has a good purpose behind it, though we may not see what that purpose is until we meet our Savior face-to-face.