In the early years after my diagnosis of aggressive relapsing-rem
itting MS, one attack would follow the previous with random timing ... and I was not used to the idea of being chronically ill. Weeks, months and eventually years were spent convalescing either terror-struck or despondent. My grief was so deep, my heart-ache so sharp. I can see how one can despair of life. It’s hard to think back; mind you, it's hard to contemplate the future.A dream
One night about two years after being diagnosed, while enduring yet another MS episode, I dreamed I was a schoolboy again, run
ning through a farmer’s field, playing hide-and-seek. My dream recalled care-free days as a willowy and agile boy in the early 1960s. The dream was so real! I could feel the wind in my hair and hear the sounds of other children playing and laughing. The dream did not have a story. It took the form of remembrance of that joie de vivre of childhood when each day had its own wonder ― that special time when heartaches are short-lived and sorrows do not cut to the bone. I could smell my dusty, sweaty self having fun. And I didn’t care that crows flew high above me.[1]I awoke longing for those days. They were so long ago and far away. The only thing left of my dream was a heart-warming memory of childhood play. The joy it had evoked quickly faded like the faint aroma of perfume that lingers in a room after a beautiful woman has left. My body convulsed with sobs, my head rested on a pillow wet from tears.
The old self died
My tears were responding to grief, but also the memory of early childhood Bliss. My tears only foreshadowed many to come as I entered a new phase of deep grief and soul pain.
It was important to grieve because the man I used to be was gone as surely as if he died.Yet out of the quagmire of sorrow, grief and profound loss of physical function, and premature, forced retirement (at the age of thirty- eight years), a new self emerged. This new self was different from the old self, but no less vital or unique. What was required of me was to be open to God’s leading into a new phase of life.
In 1994, I wrote a position paper opposing public policy
sympathetic to euthanasia and assisted suicide and sent it to Canada's Justice Minister. This got me an invitation to Ottawa to appear before a Canadian senate committee studying whether euthanasia should be legalized.Invitations started coming to me to speak at universities, to hospital medical staffs, religious and denominational leaders, politicians and legislative committees as well as community groups all across Canada and the United States.
I realized that God had something he wanted me to say – not despite my disability … because of it. It was a simple message really, a message every man woman and child knows in their heart of hearts. The message was this: Civilized societies do not kill the weak, vulnerable or unwanted members. We are all called to encounter Divine love.
This encounter is high risk: It can either harden, melt or break human hearts, but it is certain to change people. Many people recoil and reject Divine love because it requires something in return that costs too much. Divine love gives everything and asks the loved to respond the same way.
People w
ho accept Divine love into their lives (other than small children) generally have broken hearts and poverty of spirit. They have nothing left to give but themselves and that is what God asks. After all, a broken heart is sometimes the beginning of human transformation that dovetails with transcendence beyond self-interest. This transcendence is evident by the broken-hearted person noticing the vulnerability and grief of other broken hearts. We transcend ourselves by reaching out with love and concern to them. Divine love can make dead or broken hearts beat anew.The Divine Love of God
Love rooted in the Divine embraces life and never rejects it. It builds
up people, it never tears them down. Love rooted in the secure foundation of the Divine always chooses life, never death.Love rooted in the Divine pursues love for love’s sake and does not count the cost. It is not afraid to embraces the losers, the unloved or the unlovable of this world. Why? Because that's the nature of Divine love that we find in the transforming experience of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Hearts that have been transformed by Divine love understand there is immense value in every human life -- from conception to natural death -- at every state and stage, for no other reason than every human life bears the indelible Image of God.
I only began to understand the capacity of Divine love to transform the human heart when mine had been thoroughly broken. I only began to listen, really listen, when my spirit became poor and desperate. Only when I had nothing left to say did God give me words to speak.
And so when was invited to speak somewhere in North America, I prayed that I would not say utter one word more t
han God wanted me me to say … but not one word less either.Strangely yet wonderfully, I discovered that I was more use to God disabled than I ever was able-bodied! For more than a decade, I travelled to cities and towns from coast to coast across North America with that message.
And then one rainy night my wife, LaRee, and I sat in a plane on the tarmac at Chicago’s O’Hare airport waiting to take off. Something occurred to me as I looked out the window of the plane. I said to my wife,“It’s so odd. All these years and places, I've only told people what they already knew. It’s the same message I learned as a boy. Love is the only thing that matters, and we are supposed to protect the weak.”
I knew these simple truths, even as a small school boy running through a farmer's field. Everybody knows that beginning in their childhoods. Some people remember it, others forget it. Every person changes with time, some for better and some for worse. But the standard of Divine love remains for all who want it and accept it. (If there is a "right to choose", perhaps that is it. We can choose to accept or reject Jesus Christ and his Divine love.)
That rainy night in Chicago, I realized my task was done. The telephone ceased to ring, the invitations to speak stopped. The message I was supposed to say was said. I do not understand why but apparently it needed to be said from position of vulnerability, by a sick and crippled man. I met the requirement.Does God have something else for me to do or say? I don't know and I'm much too stupid to figure that out on my own.
Renowned American author and bioethical thinker, Wesley J. Smith, has written a number of internationally acclaimed books including CULTURE OF DEATH: The Assault on Medical Ethics In America, (Encounter Books, 2000) and FORCED EXIT: The slippery Slope from Suicide to Legalized Murder (Spence Publishing, 2003). In his 2004 book a Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, he wrote as his dedication, "To Mark Pickup -- 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.'"
Wesley Smith's kind words were undeserved. Pure hearts are the possesions of babies, small children and better people than me. Yet I need a fresh vision of God to clarify my spiritual purpose on earth and, of course, to accept my relentless, slow descent into the terror of neurological disease.MP
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[1] One of Vincent Van Gogh’s last paintings was entitled "Wheatfield with Crows" (July 1890), completed just prior to his suicide. It was part of a series of landscapes painted in the last days of Van Gogh’s life. "Wheatfield with Crows" is a dark and ominous painting of crows flying over a wheat field near the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise. Many art historians have speculated that the threatening sky and disturbing mood of the painting was a premonition of his impending suicide. Although this theory is disputed by reputable sources like the National Art Gallery’s website (http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/vgbro.shtm, 25 February 2006), Van Gogh’s own words about the landscapes he painted provide a tantalizing insight. He said, "I almost think that these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words."
