{"id":395,"date":"2021-01-05T11:55:48","date_gmt":"2021-01-05T16:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=395"},"modified":"2021-01-05T11:55:48","modified_gmt":"2021-01-05T16:55:48","slug":"looking-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/05\/looking-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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During the summer I turned 10 years old, I was on top of the world.

I played lots of softball.\u00a0 I was even asked to be the starting pitcher in my league\u2019s All-Star Game.

Our family took a memorable road trip.\u00a0 It culminated in a visit to Mammoth Cave, which launched my lifelong love of spelunking.\u00a0

As a kid who actually enjoyed school, I couldn\u2019t wait to begin fifth grade.\u00a0

The final act of summer was the obligatory visit to the family doctor \u2013 the one where he would smile, nod, check all the boxes on the school health form, and send me on my way.

But Dr. Glenn C. Lord (the man who had brought me into the world a decade earlier, and for whom my parents had named me) did not smile and nod when he listened to my heart.\u00a0 His stethoscope seemed to linger over my chest for a very long time.\u00a0 He asked his nurse to draw some blood \u2013 a novel experience for me, and definitely not my favorite new thing.\u00a0 \u201cCome back in two weeks,\u201d he said to my mother.

Fourteen days later we returned.\u00a0 Dr. Lord remained silent as he listened to my heart.\u00a0 \u201cGlenn, why don\u2019t you step into the waiting room for a few minutes,\u201d he said.\u00a0

About a half hour later my mom and I were heading home.\u00a0 \u201cWhat is it?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 I remember that she gripped the steering wheel tightly.\u00a0 She began to cry.\u00a0 \u201cDo you remember last year, when you had that high fever?\u201d\u00a0 I had been assailed by a strep infection.\u00a0 My fever had spiked to 106 degrees.\u00a0 \u201cDr. Lord says you contracted rheumatic fever.\u00a0 It damaged your heart.\u00a0 Things are going to be different now.\u201d

That was an understatement.

It took me a while to master the specifics of my medical condition.\u00a0 I informed friends and neighbors that I was suffering from \u201cromantic fever,\u201d which prompted several adults to sigh and say, \u201cI had that once.\u201d\u00a0

Rheumatic fever was still a terrifying malady in the early 1960\u2019s.\u00a0 The prescribed treatment was twofold: a daily dose of oral penicillin and an almost absolute cessation of physical activity.\u00a0

My participation in sports of any kind was over.\u00a0 That\u2019s tough for a 10-year-old boy to hear.\u00a0 The fifth grade classroom at Indianapolis Public School #66 was on the second floor.\u00a0 I could walk up the stairs just once each day.\u00a0 Because the school had no lunch program, kids always walked home at midday.\u00a0 I brought my lunch and stayed behind, eating in the classroom by myself.\u00a0 Sometimes I was joined by my teacher, Miss Carnegis.\u00a0

My bedroom was on the second floor of our house.\u00a0 I could walk up the stairs once daily.\u00a0 After school I would put on my pajamas and get into bed.\u00a0 That\u2019s where I stayed until morning.\u00a0 I followed this program of radical withdrawal from \u201cstrenuous activities\u201d for almost a year.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that Mom constantly hovered over me.\u00a0 \u201cAre you having chest pains?\u201d she would ask.\u00a0

Even as Dr. Lord gradually lifted my restrictions, he predicted that I had almost certainly lost my shot at a normal life.\u00a0 I would never climb a mountain.\u00a0 I would never play tennis or basketball or any sport that stressed my cardiovascular system.\u00a0 I would have to refrain from physical exertion.\u00a0 My place would be on the sidelines.\u00a0 And I just might die as a young man.\u00a0

As it turned out, he was wrong.\u00a0

I never did return to gym class (something which probably improved my grade point average).\u00a0 But by the time I arrived at college, numerous physical exams revealed that the damage to my heart was apparently less serious than first thought.\u00a0 All restrictions were removed.\u00a0 I climbed a few mountains.\u00a0 I resumed playing sports.\u00a0

A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.\u00a0 Once again I felt free.\u00a0

All it had cost me was half my childhood.\u00a0

But there\u2019s more to this story.\u00a0 That dire diagnosis and everything that followed turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

As a 10-year-old, I had always loved books.\u00a0 But as soon as I was sentenced to my classroom and my bedroom, books became my closest companions.\u00a0 They were my world.\u00a0 I don\u2019t doubt that God was always going to call me to ministry.\u00a0 But those years of seclusion, more than anything else, were shaping the kind of ministry I would one day be able to provide.\u00a0

I would even dare to say that my rheumatic fever, while genuinely exasperating and hope-crushing all those years, actually accomplished<\/em> a kind of preparation I would never otherwise have received.

On at least three occasions, the apostle Paul begged God to take away a particular affliction in his life.\u00a0 He called it his \u201cthorn in the flesh.\u201d In one of the Bible\u2019s most dramatic examples of unanswered prayer, God flatly said No.\u00a0

\u201cMy grace\u00a0is sufficient for you,\u201d God assured Paul, \u201cfor my power\u00a0is made perfect in weakness.\u201d (2 Corinthians 12:9)

God, in other words, does not always supernaturally end our suffering.\u00a0 But he makes supernatural use<\/em> of our suffering.\u00a0 And that makes all the difference in the world.

Maybe not to a 10-year-old boy.\u00a0

That is, until that boy grows up and looks back and is able to see, at last, the hand of God.
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During the summer I turned 10 years old, I was on top of the world. I played lots of softball.\u00a0 I was even asked to be the starting pitcher in my league\u2019s All-Star Game. Our family took a memorable road trip.\u00a0 It culminated in a visit to Mammoth Cave, which launched my lifelong love of spelunking.\u00a0 As a kid who… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[112],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-suffering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}