Momentum

I've had a few people tell me how strong we are or how they are impressed with how we are handling this. I guess maybe I've been misrepresenting how this is going.  It's not a pretty scene down here in the mud and blood like it might come across on this blog. It's a battle more mentally and spiritually taxing than anything I think we've ever faced together. It's hard, it sucks, I hate it, and I want it all to go away. Katrina and I have butted heads more times in the last few days than we probably have in the last couple of years. She is as stubborn, bull headed, and fiercely independent as ever she was. I cry, I pray, I hope, and I worry. It's a fight everyday to face another round of uncertainty. Don't look at us as some sort of "I don't know if I could handle it like they are" example.  It's not really a matter of choice. What else can we do? It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, one that I've turned to to help me get through a few struggles in my adult life that are brought on by things over which I have no control:

‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ― ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’ ― ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Book I, Chapter 2.

 If you could sit where I sit and feel what I feel you would know it's nothing so admirable as it may appear. It's just a grim determination to carry forward. 

If you want an example to follow look to the one I have. From the day we found out about Katrina's tumor I have watched and thought about what I know of one man. A man who is so humble that the very fact that I admire him for the way he has stood by his wife that it might embarrass him. His name is Pete MacFarlane. I knew, as I thought about all the possible outcomes of this surgery, that If I could be even a quarter of the man  for Katrina that Pete has been to his dear wife Nancy then things would be okay. He has stood by her through so much, most of which I only have the fainest inkling. Yet he has still fulfilled; No, I would say magnified, every calling I've seen him take on. He always has a smile and a firm handshake. He always wants to know how my family is, and he genuinely cares when he asks. He always wants to serve. I can see the way he truly, deeply  loves his wife in the way he serves her and yet still serves wherever else he can. I have known other, lesser men who have abandoned their wives when their health became less than convenient. I chose to be like Pete. I chose to honor my covenant with my wife regardless of the outcome of this trial we are facing. Look to Pete as an example, not me. 

I'm just Scott, weary, tired and broken. I continue my march because I made a choice to try to be like Pete, and now it takes less effort to keep marching than to stop my forward momentum and lay down to die. There is no strength here, just a choice, followed by forward momentum.