Ulysses

When I was in high school some of my friends and I went to the beach to check out some rare, twenty something foot waves that had been generated by a tropical storm.  We were not crazy enough to think we could swim in waves of that magnitude, but a little ways down the beach the waves were a much more manageable ten to twelve feet.  So, we put on our swim fins and jumped into the water.

In what seemed like seconds the current pulled us out to the waves.  And, in the time it takes to snap your finger our thoughts of body surfing changed to thoughts of survival.

As each wave came all I could do was take a deep breath, dive under it, swim to the surface and frantically brace myself for the next one.  The force of the rip tide and the waves themselves was unlike anything I had ever experienced.  And, for the next forty-five minutes to an hour I fought with everything I had just to get back to shore.  The waves were relentless, and I seriously feared I would not make it out of the water alive.

If you have lived for any length of time there is a good chance that at some time or another your life has felt like that hour I spent in the water.  You have gone through a season or seasons where one wave has come after another.  You have experienced those times when nothing seemed to go right, and a new crisis would emerge before you even had a chance to catch your breath and gather yourself after the last devastating blow.

As a pastor I hear such stories all the time.  I cannot tell you how my heart breaks for people who have been in the waves so long that they are not sure they can survive even one more set back.  Sometimes the waves are the result of bad choices, sometimes they just come, and other times it is a combination of both.  But the waves, and the despair, are the same either way.

For the last nearly three years my family has been fighting through those daunting waves.  It started with the tsunami that came with Jonathan's passing, and has not ceased since.  The details are mostly unimportant, but waves of various types continue to crash over us.  A wave of that magnitude seems to generate a string of smaller crises -- but crises just the same.

One of the things that I think everyone in the family thought about after Jonathan was taken from us, but was left mostly unsaid, was that Jonathan's dog could not die.  He just couldn't.  We couldn't survive losing him.  I know that its irrational, but Ulysses is to us the last living, breathing evidence of Jonathan's life -- of his existence. 

Fortunately, Ulysses was only six or seven when Jonathan passed away, so we knew that we would not be losing him anytime soon -- or so we thought.  Then, several weeks ago we could tell that something was wrong with Jonathan's dog.  We ultimately found out that he has cancer, and just today we learned that he likely has only a few weeks left with us.

I am tired of seeing my family in pain.  I am tired of being in pain myself.  And, I am tired of the tears.  Losing a dog any time is obviously not a good thing, but in the circumstances it is more than any of us should have to endure.  For us, it is one more piece of Jonathan that will be lost to us forever.

I know without doubt that God has used our experience, and our pain, for our good and for the good of his kingdom.  I also know that we will survive this, just as we have survived so many waves before.  But I pray for a time of peace for my family ... and for justice.