A Chronic Condition

It's impossible to avoid.  It slaps you in the face.  The wheelchair gives you all the information you need to know that I live with a chronic condition.  The disease and its impediments are draped around me.  You might be tempted into thinking that we are different.  This is true, in the small details.  Yet, in the big picture, my struggles are not limited to living with muscular dystrophy.

Inasmuch as we are all humans, we are all the same.  We all struggle.  It is an experience that we share.  This is our communal plight; the thread that connects us. This is the big picture.  When we focus on the small details, when we fail to see others as human, as part of us, we fool ourselves into believing that we are disconnected.    

There is a group focused on the big picture.  They have an admirable goal.  They call themselves, "Humans Refusing to Be Enemies."  I like this group's determination to befriend across cultural, religious, and racial lines. As a Christian, I, too, should be of the same mindset.  

In fact, we are called to an even more encompassing condition: to love your God, to love your neighbor, and to love your enemy.  I am not advocating some type of 1960's free love ideology.  Choosing to love an enemy will be one of the more difficult struggles you will face, if not the most difficult.  The testing will come when your enemy decides not to love you in return.  On one side of the spectrum, you may encounter discord and disagreement.  But, on the other side, you may come into contact with an enemy whose goal is your destruction and annihilation.  It is not what we encounter that defines us but how we respond.  

There will always be an enemy.  Someone recently commented that death was his enemy.  In the past, I have said that my disease is my enemy.  Others claim that a particular race or a particular religion is their enemy.  When we claim an enemy, it is usually a stance against something or someone.  We are filled with strong emotions of malice and repulsion.  As long as we live with such a bitter mindset, we are bound and shackled to a disabling, chronic condition.  One where we are choosing to feel disconnected.  In essence, we fight against ourselves and how can we win a war waged against our own heart?

So, we all struggle.  It is a chronic condition of life.  We all have enemies.  Our enemies can be personal, philosophical, cultural, or ideological struggles.  How we choose to respond to our enemy is a chronic condition, too.  Choosing to hate your enemy is easy and is disabling.  You drape yourself in a shroud of despair and bitterness.  Choosing to love your enemy is an all encompassing, chronic condition, too.  One that will require you to be diligent and determined.  You may not get those warm fuzzies but you will get something better: a life of internal peace, joy, and hope.

As the years pass, I am convinced more and more that we need to let hope reign and to love freely.  Together, let us make the harder choice to live with a chronic condition of love.