Not Alone and Not the Only

I want to share something with you that God has been teaching me through these tough times:

We are, none of us, alone, and we are not the only ones to have dealt with our circumstances.

The bond of Christian brotherhood is stronger than I knew it could be. It reaches across miles, ages, backgrounds, nationalities, circumstances, and any other possible barrier you can think of. Over the last few months, a steady stream of fellow believers have been reaching out to our family. Some of these are family or close friends, but many are people who are merely acquaintances or even friends of friends of friends that we've never met at all.  But without knowing very much at all about each other, we know we share the most important thing--the love of Christ and belief in salvation only through Him. That proves to be a sure foundation upon which we strangers can meet and never feel as if we're out of place. It gives us confidence to be vulnerable with each other, to share our thoughts, griefs, pains, concerns, prayers, love, etc. It draws a Christian on one side of the country to donate money to help the adoption process of a family on the other, a family they will likely never meet. It draws the mothers of my friends and my mother's friends and my past friends and even my future friends to rally around us in prayer and support.

I've spoken thus far about love among Christians, but let me turn now and share of God's common grace among non-Christians as well. God gives even those who do not know Him the ability to love others. While there is less of a sure foundation, for we do not base our lives on the same principles and truths, there is still room for us to meet and to love one another. We meet in our shared humanity, in our shared experiences, and God uses these to reveal Himself to us all, those who acknowledge Him and those who don't. It's my prayer that He would use this to draw these others to Himself as well.

Now to the second part of the above lesson: We are not the first or only to have gone through hard times. Though each life is a unique combination of trials, tribulations, joys, pains, accomplishments, etc., each individual experience is rarely if ever unique within humanity as a whole. What I mean is that while there are few others who found out so late about their child's illness, even fewer still with skeletal dysplasia, fewer still of the type that Ian has, there are yet many who have journeyed through a pregnancy in which they knew they would most likely lose their little one shortly after birth. There are many more still who didn't know until it happened. We can cast wider or smaller nets, but either way we find that we are not the first or only to have dealt with these emotions or these circumstances.

This is a strange thing to promote as a good. Wouldn't it be better if Ian were the only one ever to have gone through this? In a way, I suppose it would. In another sense, this shared experience helps us to be humble and not to indulge in self-seeking or self-centeredness. It also helps us to lean on others who have gone before. It helps us to do some of the very things I was talking about above, to bond based on our shared experiences, to love each other through our very tears.

I can't tell you how many stories I've heard from others since we began to share our story with our worlds. There are so many who have endured the loss of a little one through still births or miscarriages or shortly lived lives. There are many others who were able to raise their children but found out that it would take extra effort because of an unforeseen condition.

I share this for two reasons. The first is that I hope you will know if you ever are in difficult times that there is hope and understanding out there, probably closer than you think. The second is that I want to remind those of you who are not currently enduring something to look around at the people in your life, for one of them may need the wisdom and understanding you gleaned from your last trials.

Not only are we not alone and not the only, we won't be the last to endure such trials. I hope that I can take the lessons I've learned, the love I've been given from others who have come alongside me and those who've traveled this road before, and use them to help others that may cross my path in the future.

May God redeem the pain of those who have traveled before through their helping us, and may He redeem our pain as we use it to help others in the future as well.