by Patrick Gray
Justin’s breath creates small white clouds as he says, “It still amazes me how far we’ve come.”
I just stare at the orange, pink, and yellow pressing into the dark blue, releasing a new day.
Soon, it is time to get moving again. The sunrise has beaten us to Cruz de Ferro, but daylight is waiting for us there. With a little less than a mile to go, we cover the remaining distance relatively quickly.
From a distance, we can see the iron cross, which sits atop a tall pole, but none of us appreciates the stones at the base of the towering monument until we get much closer. There must be a million of them, maybe more. I feel a heaviness I haven’t figured out yet.
In 2001, Justin and I, along with our wives, visited Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp. When we stepped across the threshold that separated the grounds of the camp from the public street, we could feel a weight, an unseen force that pressed in on us from every angle. An invisible boundary marked the location of so much sorrow, pain, and death. Though the heaviness is different here, we notice a similar change as we cross another unseen boundary. As I push Justin to the base of the mound, a quiet reverence fills the air and we feel the weight increase, a force that is difficult to explain. A few other pilgrims are here, but no words are spoken.
The sheer number of stones left behind over hundreds of years makes me wonder how much grief and loss have been left here. Pictures of lost loved ones sit under a number of stones; others are nailed to the pole that supports the cross. Farewell letters and notes of forgiveness sit anchored by small rocks everywhere we look. I feel a tightness in my chest, and a lump wells in my throat. This is holy ground.
Behind us, we hear laughter as another group of pilgrims nears the cross. Turning to watch their approach, we see their countenance change as they cross the invisible line. They slow their gait, silence their voices, and lift their eyes from the stones on the ground to the cross that points skyward. Justin and I begin to talk quietly about what we might leave here. As I turn a small medallion between my thumb and forefinger, Justin asks, “Is that the prayer angel Becca gave you?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
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Becca’s office is two doors down from mine. For the past four years, we have worked together and drawn close as friends, facing many of the same struggles in our jobs.
On my last day of work before leaving for Spain, Becca came into my office and placed a small pewter medallion in my hand. A simple outline of an angel stared back at me.
“I will be praying for your safety along the journey,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“Do you think you’ll come back to this?”
“Yeah, what else would I do?”
“I don’t know.”
We’ve been given so much on this journey—money, resources, a bike, a wheelchair, and many hours of help—but sometimes it’s the smallest of gifts that have the greatest impact.
At the base of this mound of stones, I look at Justin and am reminded of how much he has already left behind.
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— JUSTIN —
Staring at Patrick, I can see he’s wrestling with what he knows he needs to leave here at the foot of this cross. I know what he’s feeling because I’ve been there myself.
The night I drove my beloved Toyota Tundra for the last time is still vivid in my memory.
I remember the dark sky peppered with the tiny lights of distant stars.
I remember the streets empty of people as I attempted to walk the short distance from my truck to my front porch.
I remember the shock and pain of my legs giving out as my cane was no longer enough to keep me upright.
I remember the sound of my knees hitting the walkway.
I remember the struggle to get back up, only to fall twice more, each fall harder than the one before.
I remember the coolness of the concrete against my face and hands as I dragged myself along the path toward the porch.
But what I remember most are the tears that flowed and the words I spoke.
For years, prayers for healing had been lifted to the heavens with no answer. An unknown diagnosis with no cure, no effective treatment, and no prognosis for how long my life would last, just the knowledge that the end is coming—these things had taken their toll.
Through my tears and confusion, I looked at the twinkling lights dotting the sky and broke the quiet of the night as I spoke to the emptiness above.
“God, I don’t know why this is happening, but if you’re not going to heal me, at least make this mean something! Let me be your vessel, let me be your light, because I don’t know what else to do.”
In that moment, I finally took hold of my unknown future. I embraced a life filled with questions and few answers. Peace consumed me like a warm bath after a cold rain. Whether it had been set in motion years earlier or was an answer to my prayer that day, I couldn’t begin to understand how much this moment would mean someday.
Four years later, in January 2010, Kirstin and I were in the throes of parenthood. Lauren had been born the previous year. Our two boys—Jaden, six, and Noah, four—and our nine-month-old daughter kept us incredibly busy.
I had perfected life in my manual wheelchair. The disease had taken my legs, but I could navigate our new house, take care of the kids, and complete the many graphic design projects that paid the bills. Life wasn’t just manageable; life was good.
A thousand miles to the north, Patrick and Donna lived with their five-year-old daughter, Cambria, and two-year-old son, Joshua, in Meridian, a suburb of Boise, Idaho. Their family would soon be complete. In a few short months, they were headed to China to adopt their third child, little Olivia.
We were always in constant communication with each other, so Patrick was fully aware of my life with a wheelchair. The four of us had traveled so much together; he really had no worries for me. The disease had remained at my waist or below for several years. There was no sign of progression in sight, and a successful graphic design career left little reason for concern.
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It always begins with twitching. Slight spasms foreshadow much worse things to come. Late in January new spasms arrived. The dreaded sensation grew in my right upper shoulder. And as these twitches increased in frequency and intensity, weakness was soon to follow. Historically, the changes had come slowly. This time was different. A rapid decay of strength and coordination was revealing itself. What began in my right shoulder soon attacked my left shoulder, then both arms. My lower abdominal muscles and hands began to fail. Within a month and a half, I lost nearly 70 percent of my upper body’s function.
My upbeat demeanor faded as the magnitude of the situation, the reality of what this all meant, began to sink in. The weight of it all resulted in darkness and depression—unwanted companions. For the first time in my life, I was facing a hole that was black and bottomless. Empty. It was a frightening place to be, and the temptation to let myself fall into the hole seemed as powerful as gravity. At first, it pulled slowly, but with each passing day the force seemed to grow.
I began to think, If I kill myself, I kill the burden.
By now, several weeks had passed since I first lost so much use of my hands. The impact this was having on my wife, on my kids, was overwhelming. Kirstin now had to dress me and bathe me. She had to help me go to the bathroom. She had to cut my food for me and lift the fork to my lips.
Sitting at the edge of the abyss, I asked myself, “How can I place this on my wife? How can I put my children through this? How can I let my friends endure this?”
I thought about driving my wheelchair into oncoming traffic or off a cliff, or drowning myself in our tub. Suicide had become a very real option, a way to end the burden, to take away the darkness.
As thoughts of taking my own life filled my head each day, I revisited that night alone on my front porch, and now I was questioning whether the moment was real or I had imagine
d it. It seemed so long ago, but the peace I had felt was real, and though it seemed distant, all I had to do was turn from the darkness and let the peace of that moment counter the fear that welled inside me. It took a conscious decision to focus on the peace, and though it has never completely taken away the darkness, the peace shines brightly enough that only distant shadows remain.
Convinced this would one day mean something, I made the conscious decision to turn my back on the blackness and let light show me the way. Somehow, some way, something great would come from all of this.
And so a new season of adapting began. Everything had to be relearned: eating, drinking, brushing teeth, showering, going to the bathroom, and getting dressed. Every aspect of life presented a brand-new set of challenges.
My graphic design work continued, but I was definitely slowing down with limited use of my hands. Using newly acquired voice-automated software, what had once taken forty hours to finish now took sixty or more. The writing was on the wall. My design career was coming to a close.
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— PATRICK —
Before Justin lost the use of his hands, I was able to support him through our friendship with little fear of his disease. But the sudden shift in his condition profoundly affected every part of me—darkening my mind, heart, and soul. On a phone call in February 2010, when Justin told me about the sudden and drastic loss of strength and function in so many of his muscles, I realized this was the first time he was frightened about his future.
When I saw that he could no longer hold a cup to drink or lift a bite of food to his lips, I began to pray for healing, for some sort of divine intervention on my friend’s behalf. I prayed more fervently and desperately than ever. But no answer came, and I walked to the edge of a very different black hole, a different kind of darkness, and so began a cycle of doubt.
In the months that followed, my anger grew. Bitterness toward a God who had turned his back on my friend resulted in angry prayers, and those prayers led to heated, one-way shouting matches.
Over spring break of that year, I went down to San Diego to give Kirstin a break as she took a long weekend with her mom and sister. When she picked me up from the airport, we had a tear-filled conversation about the unknown future.
We pulled ourselves together when we got to the house, and I helped Justin and the kids navigate the weekend while Kirstin got some much-needed rest. For four days, I stared Justin’s disease in the face and held myself together, thinking I was being strong for my friend.
After returning home, I stood in my living room and looked at a picture of the four of us from our trip to Europe. There we were, all standing and smiling. I lost it.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I yelled.
“How dare you take away his ability to hold his kids! How dare you take away his ability to hold his wife! How dare you take away his hands, his lifeblood! Weren’t his legs enough?
“I thought you were bigger than this! I thought you were powerful!” I screamed.
Out of breath, I lay on the floor of my living room and cried, and my faith crumbled.
Still attending church, I slowly became disengaged. Little desire existed to be a part of anything faith-based, and doubt reigned. Turning to time with my family and music, I attempted to fill the void. Over the next two years, I stuffed my anger and bitterness deep inside. And despite the time we spent together and the many phone calls in between, I left Justin unaware of the internal struggle that was brewing.
During the summer of 2012, Justin and his family visited us in Idaho. Our week together was crammed with family time as Justin’s brother, Ryan, came over with his wife, Tara, and their two children, and Justin’s parents drove from nearby Ontario. On Saturday, we had a laughter-filled barbecue and late-night conversation as the adults sat on the back patio under a brilliant moonlit sky. Sunday morning, we loaded up the cars and drove to Eagle Nazarene Church, as we did every Sunday. After the service, Justin and I got involved in an extended conversation with Ed Weaver, the church’s associate pastor.
Ed had a history with both of us, dating back more than twenty years to when he was our youth pastor at Ontario First Church of the Nazarene. From the summer after sixth grade through our junior year of high school, Ed had endured our disrespectful behavior and immature antics. It was a welcome change to have a conversation with him as adults, and an opportunity for Ed to catch up on the many happenings in Justin’s life a thousand miles away.
Deep in conversation, I was about to see proof of something more. I needed something tangible to counter the doubt and lack of understanding. I didn’t know it, but I needed a miracle.
As our discussion came to a close, Ed and Justin continued talking quietly off to the side. In their conversation, I overheard Ed ask Justin, “If you could receive physical healing right now, would you choose it?”
I was certain I knew what Justin’s response would be: “Of course!” But Justin looked up at Ed from his wheelchair and said with authority, “No!”
Dumbfounded, all I could think was, Wait . . . he said no?
In a moment when time seemed to stand still, it hit me. This wasn’t my fight. For the past two years, I had been bitter and angry because the battle I had been fighting was a losing one. My friend was slowly wasting away, and there was nothing being done.
So focused on his apparent need for physical healing, for the miracle, I had failed to recognize what Justin really needed: He needed me to step into the real battle. He needed hands and feet—my hands and feet. The miracle had already happened.
That’s when I realized that, more often than not, the miracle isn’t the absence of struggle, disease, or pain; it is the presence of grace and certainty, the ability to face strife, the unknown, or a slow death, without fear. My obsession with divine intervention had distracted me from the truth that God had already intervened.
We desperately want provision to make sense on our terms—bills paid, food on the table, and sickness taken away—but simply waiting on God and being angry when he doesn’t show up the way we want him to is a perverted sense of provision. Make no mistake, I believe that physical healings still happen. But God has made it pretty clear that while he answers prayers, those answers are based on his understanding, not our own; and when it comes to God’s provision for the world, we are the front lines. Or at least we should be.
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Being hands and feet to the world is often referred to as a biblical concept, and yet it is never directly referenced in the Bible. However, Jesus paints a very clear picture in Matthew 25 about what it means to be hands and feet to the world around us. Here, Jesus tells the story of the goats and the sheep.
Jesus has returned, and the entire world is gathered at the foot of his throne. He separates everyone into two groups as a shepherd would separate goats from sheep. The goats go to his left, and he places the sheep on his right. As he addresses those on his right, he invites them to receive their blessing from his Father, and he tells them the reason for their blessing.
“When I was hungry you fed me, and when I was thirsty you gave me something to drink. When I was a stranger you invited me into your homes, and when I was naked you gave me clothes to wear. When I was sick you visited me and took care of me, and when I was in prison you came to me.”
Then those on his right ask in confusion, “When did we feed you? When did we give you drink? When did we invite you into our homes? When did we clothe you? When did we tend to you when you were sick or visit you in prison?”
Jesus answers, “Whatever you have done for the least of my brothers, you have done to me.”[3]
Over the years, I’ve discovered that many biblical scholars use this passage to demonstrate a God who chooses, who decides who is in and who is out. But I see a lesson that must not be overlooked. Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, invite the stranger in, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and go to those in prison.
Justin and I have experienced so much provision he
re on the Camino, and so much before we left home—a wheelchair purchased by others, financial assistance for the trip, shelter when Justin’s wheel broke, a welder’s skills to repair it, and the push and pull of countless pilgrims. So many things have happened through the hands and feet of others.
Undeniably, we are the front lines of God’s provision to the world. If we believe Jesus left his Holy Spirit among us, then we must embrace the fact that He charges us with the very task of loving the world. Loving the world on his terms. Loving the world unconditionally and passionately meeting the needs of others, of those who are broken. We are his hands and feet. We are his provision for the world.
But how often do we see others struggling and take on their cause, raising the battle flag in an effort to fight for them, without knowing what they’re fighting for, without knowing what they really need? What I had failed to see was that I had created a battle that Justin wasn’t fighting. I was waging war on behalf of my friend, when what he really needed was for me to step into his battle. Not a battle for healing, but a battle for living, a battle for provision. Waiting on a miracle and wrecked by doubt, I had failed to see the little miracles unfolding to my right and to my left.
Every human interaction, every relationship is an opportunity to provide for one another, to provide time, energy, resources, hope, love, compassion, or grace. There is no limit to what we can provide for others, or what others can provide for us.
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By embracing the life he’s been given, Justin has provided me with a new perspective, a moment of proof. Life is messy, and the only way I can make it through is to let others carry the burdens I can’t. But I have to let go of the safety I find in my own abilities; I have to let go of the reins so I can embrace the provision of others.
Here at the foot of this iron cross in the mountains of northern Spain, my friend is teaching me yet another lesson. While I have physically pushed him the past several weeks and years, he has slowly, patiently—and perhaps even unknowingly—been pushing me to see that I am capable of more than I think I am. I just have to trust God and his strength instead of my own.