MEN A TIME WHEN TIM MCGRAW, AND THE BIBLE, ARE OF HELP

How will you respond if a loved one receives the soul-crushing news they have an illness that may not be cured? Will you go into the rescue-savior mode and try to fix it? Will you go into depression and despair? Will you face that awful diagnosis with denial?

I have walked beside so many who have gotten a hard diagnosis and have responded in one of those ways. What we usually do is cycle through most of those responses. Over the years, I have found I learn best by watching what other people do. Let me share my experience as a man who’s walked through hard diagnoses with more than a few, and observed life. I want “to protect the innocent,” but this story is true.

I have a friend diagnosed with a disease that almost everyone we know said she was far too young to have. She was in the early years of her career, busy with work, enjoying life and marriage. But her friends started to notice “something just wasn’t right.”

Her husband couldn’t see it at first, or at least didn’t want to think about it, but after lots of urging to go to the doctor, my friend went. The diagnosis was not good.

Now life became a blur of doctors, labs and technicians, medications and genuine physical struggle. And, of course, insurance paperwork. In the middle of that were the dynamics of a couple in love trying to make the marriage work.

How would they keep their relationship alive and cope with this unwanted guest that now lived in their midst? I will tell you it has not been without struggle. But they have made it work. It is still “a work in progress,” but they are stronger and more in love now than they were five years ago.

One of the keys for them has been their faith. They look to Christ for the strength and encouragement to press on. They also have a deep commitment to “seeing this through together.” Because they are married, they no longer think as individuals; they think as one. If life continues for both of them, they will do whatever it takes to finish well together.

They have stopped thinking about the disease as something that will take her life early, or a mistake, or even as “God somehow being unfair.” They have committed to seeing this as an opportunity to trust God and one another in new and deeper ways. They have actually found they have more deeply cherished hours together because they have realized life is like a vapor.

I actually believe the Tim McGraw song, “Live Like You Were Dying,” has something wonderfully important for us to learn. You’ve probably heard that song. It tells the story of a man who gets the news his father has a life-threatening illness. The wisdom of the dad to his son is live life to the fullest and do things he had always wanted to do: skydiving, mountain climbing, fishing, bull riding. The dad also says he became a better husband and friend.

In the middle of the song, McGraw then switches perspective to himself, talking about how going fishing with his dad stopped being an imposition and how he finally, after reading the Bible, took a long hard look back over his life and took his father’s advice.

At times it’s the hard things in life that help us see what really matters. Sometimes in life, we, as husbands, must lay ourselves aside, support our wives and invest deeply in our relationships.

I would, however, change a few lines in McGraw’s song. I think reading the Bible is a good place to begin. We need to keep reading the Bible repeatedly and get God’s perspective on our lives. Secondly, I really don’t believe I would want to admit to jumping out of a perfectly good airplane!