When You Are Squeezed

KEN AND I recently celebrated thirty-one years of marriage. But with my quadriplegia and the frustrating, constant pain that has shadowed me for the last ten years, every step has required a tough, earnest, rugged, rigorous reliance on Jesus Christ.

Even in marriage? Especially in marriage. Even though my wonderful, godly husband thought he knew what he’d signed up for when he married a paralyzed woman in a wheelchair, he really didn’t. As the years went by, the dreary, nonstop, 24-7, day-to-day routines associated with my level of disability began to weigh on him. Then, when the severe, seemingly inexplicable pain entered my experience, it was almost (as the expression goes) “a bridge too far.” Little by little, Ken slipped into a deep, numbing depression. As a result, I began to pull back emotionally too. It hurt so much to see my disability cause my husband such pain. These were what we look back on now as the “tired middle years” of our marriage.

It was a difficult time for both of us, and we wished that God would just lift all the burdens and wash away the disappointment, struggle, and emotional pain of those days. But God had a different plan in mind. In fact, He used those trials and that pressure to squeeze us, revealing the selfish, spiteful ways that were still too prominent in our hearts and in our character. In time, those difficult circumstances pushed us into a whole new level of dependence on Christ—in our marriage, and in everything else.

Quite frankly, I don’t like to be squeezed like a lemon. I don’t like it when heartbreaks, stress, and failures reveal the darker, still-unchanged parts of my soul. But I do like what happens when I cast myself afresh on the strength, love, presence, enabling, and sufficiency of Jesus Christ. The more Ken and I clung to Jesus during those days (as circumstances went from bad to worse), the more our marriage began to heal, becoming stronger, sweeter, more intimate, and more joyful than we had ever experienced. God was doing a deep-down healing in both of us, and we have discovered a love that holds on through it all. We have learned that the strongest relationships don’t come easy; they are earned. They are tested by pain and frustration, and sometimes they are pushed to what feels like the breaking point. But if those hardships push us into a profound, openhanded dependence on God’s Son, He will bring great and unexpected good out of even the worst of it.

As the psalmist said, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness” (Psalm 30:11, ESV).

GOING DEEPER . . .

I was given a physical condition which has been a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to hurt and bother me and prick my pride. Three different times I begged God to make me well again.

Each time he said, “No. But I am with you; that is all you need. My power shows up best in weak people.” Now I am glad to boast about how weak I am; I am glad to be a living demonstration of Christ’s power, instead of showing off my own power and abilities. Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite happy about “the thorn,” and about insults and hardships, persecutions and difficulties; for when I am weak, then I am strong—the less I have, the more I depend on him.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10, TLB

Remember, at your weakest, most vulnerable moment you are never nearer to the unlimited, inexhaustible power and love of the living Christ. Reach out your hand—and if you can’t manage that, just lift your little finger. Whatever your need, however dire it may seem, He will meet you with the resources of heaven.