Last week, I awoke from a dream of five hornbills in a tree. “How bizarre,” I told my family.
Two days later, Uncle L invited me to his home for the first time. At the center of his living room wall, was an oil painting of 5 hornbills in a tree.
I held back tears, knowing God wanted me to know this was His set-up.
Four years ago, Uncle L and his wife were an everyday sight for me along my morning jogs at McRitchie. I smiled at them, overwhelmed by Uncle L’s dedication- his wife was wheelchair-bound. Relentless in his encouragement, he trained her vocal cords through repeated sputterings and held her up to take steps across the boardwalk for as long as she could.
Soon after she passed on, he gave me a copy of his book “Locked In,” describing his decades of caregiving to a brilliant Economics lecturer who slowly lost her movement & speech to one of the most severe forms of Parkinson’s, Supranuclear Palsy.
“She would always say,” Uncle L reminisced, “I will carry my Cross to Calvary.”
In the past month, as I grappled with God with nerve pain in my upper limbs and chest limiting my ability to write and work, He sent warriors of the faith to encourage me— Uncle L, a friend J recovering from cancer with multiple hospital admissions, another friend C grappling with an incurable condition.
As they all lost function in different ways, grief and joy marked their lives as they carried their Crosses with stoic courage and at times, raw grief.
It was another friend who reminded me, “You are never too poor to give, nor too rich to receive. Even in your pain, you can give.”
I am learning, not to see my pain as a handicap or my “poverty” as an excuse not to serve the Lord, but a gift from which I can minister empathy to others.
Even in, in spite of and perhaps, because of my wretchedness, I can still be used by God. That’s how Great He is.
I am learning, that this is my cross, and I will carry it to Calvary if He wants me to.
*Thank you for praying with us as we carry our lives fit into a dozen suitcases across continents this weekend.