This is deeply personal, but I nonetheless share it in the hope it will encourage someone. Today I was tested for Parkinson’s. I suffered massive trauma in 2015 when I was hit by a car while bicycling: broken neck, 19 broken vertebrae, flail chest, 12 shattered ribs, hemothorax, traumatic brain injury, shatter orbital and jaw, loss of half of my blood volume, internal hemorrhaging, etc., etc., etc. I was crushed and spent a lot of time with the good nurses in UAB’s burn-trauma unit. I live with a lot of pain now. A lot. But I decided I could deal with that and other symptoms. I would press on when back on my feet. Since that time I’ve had shaking in my hands and legs. It’s gotten worse each year. If you watch the podcast you can see it, especially if I raise a paper or cup of coffee. It’s a bit embarrassing because people think I’m nervous. We knew I’d suffered nerve damage. Okay. Fine. No biggie. I’ll deal with that, too. Then my doc thought I might have Parkinson’s. Turns out Parkinson’s can be triggered by trauma. Okay, Lord, I’m yours. Break me or heal me as you see fit. I belong to you. I meant it and mean it still. But I really didn’t want a degenerative brain disorder that would impair my ability to work and burden my dear wife. So I’ve felt a sense of urgency to make hay, so to speak, while the sun still shined upon me. Today the neurologist said, nope, not Parkinson’s. Brain scan, she said, shows a “remarkably” healthy brain. No, she continued, the news is still not good: you have a spinal cord injury that is only now manifesting itself as your body loses the ability to compensate and hide it. All that breakage at the base of your skull has not healed and your spinal cord has lesions, scars. It’s inoperable. We can only treat the symptoms. Bad news, right? This was, to me, awesome news. This might depress some, but the Lord has taught me to give thanks in all things—even (especially?) the bad things. And the alternatives were all grim here. But this one meant I would not slowly lose my ability to think, work, and support my family. It meant I would continue to experience pain, numbness, shaking, yes, but all things I’m well-equipped to handle—and all things I’ve been dealing with for years. I’ve learned to embrace Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s observation that God’s purpose in us is not our comfort, but “the development of the soul.” In this life we will experience pain and suffering to some degree. It’s unrealistic to think otherwise. We find ways to cope: love and support of family and friends; therapy; medication; counseling; for me, the Psalms; and what I call the tender mercies that usually, but not always, come from women who are, by God’s design, agents of God’s grace in little kindnesses. (In my considerable experience, women are typically better caregivers. Men typically want to fix things, and without a mission or crisis to be conquered or solved, they don’t know what to do with themselves. Children know this instinctively: they run to mama for comfort; they run to dad in an emergency that requires decisive action.) To the great caregivers out there (like my wife): Thank You! God Bless You! From those of us who suffer, I cannot express enough gratitude that the Lord put you on this earth! Do not grow weary in doing good. For those who suffer: can you, in your deepest travails, give thanks? Is there something, however small, that you can point to and say, “Thank you, Lord”? My spinal cord injury, like the rest, will not be healed in this life. Perhaps you likewise suffer physical or emotional pain that will not be mended in life as we currently know it. But if you know Jesus Christ you have this great hope: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” ~Revelation 21:4 The atheist has no such hope. The Christian does. Hold onto it with both hands.