How much are you willing to do for the one you love?

Will you submit yourself to excruciating pain, complete remission of your most precious treasures, or even take their place in giving your life for them?

Of course no one in these United States would dare believe that any of these situations would occur. That may not have been the reality as pioneers were moving West. And it is not the reality that we hear about foreign nations where the safety of families is always at the discretion of enemy forces who wish tyrannical influence.

But we do from time to time encounter situations that will test our patience and abilities to handle the unexpected problems that seem to trap our weaknesses that put us at an unprepared moment where we cannot become the saving hero. Here is where the question of knowledgeable solutions is not readily at our disposal.

During the early years of our nation, people moving west and encountering Indians, disease, extreme cold, and dust storms that they never heard of back east were finding new challenges they may never have heard before moving out as nomads. Much of that was over 185 years ago. Do we need to be concerned about these difficult occurrences in today’s challenges? Perhaps if we look to the modern occasions of unexpected intrusions into our peace we just may notice there are disturbances that are familiar to our current problems that fit the current attributes we live with.

It isn’t Indians, or dust storms that seem to confront us, however diseases have taken a front seat in our lives and they are a grave concern for most of us. Reading the newspaper or watching TV we see and hear about a neighbor who has contracted cancer, many of them terminal, and say a prayer for their prognosis.

When they happen in our own families the outcome or the stress they create becomes too personal. It is there that the test of showing our love for our spouse, parents, or our precious children will reach deeply into our ability to embrace what life can hand us.

One article I wrote regarding my ministry at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, my report about a man who contracted MS and his wife had left him became a realistic sign of how often the need of real care and understanding can be discarded from a spouse who promised to love until death do they part.

Problems that affect most people through disease or tragic accidents were not part of the marriage vows. However, into every life there will be challenges that make heroes or scoundrels of anyone who is on the caring side of a relationship. Let me show a couple of those incidents that ask a healthy individual to pick up our boots and step up for our other half out of love.

Maryanne, a wife through marriage of an in-law, appeared to have a normal life-style until her husband suddenly was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue, mouth and throat. He could no longer swallow, speak, or have a normal life without a lot of help. Even after chemo-therapy and radiation treatments he needed to be fed through a feeding tube and cleansing from his wife. She is a nurse, retired and raised two daughters and is now faced with treating her husband like a child. Easy? Of course not! Willing to take care of the one who promised to love until death do us part became real and is still occurring as I write this article. She stepped up to the challenge of loving the man she married some years before and faced the task with the term we often use indiscriminately; Love!

From a personal reflection, my wife, during a number of years ago, had a diagnosis of a blocked bowel and could only be treated through a colostomy and had to wear a bag used to collect excrement which became a distasteful occurrence. At age 80 + it can become a stressful challenge for anyone, let alone a woman who is in an advanced age. I had to step up to the task of doing most of the cleansing operation. Stressful? Not in my view. Positive approach for some can be the manner of relieving the stress on the patient when she sees that I took the task as a sign of love. It had to be done and I performed the procedure willingly. There may be some who would say to Maryanne or myself; “not me!” Yet, we have to wonder what the pioneers said to one another when the only way forward was to dig in and keep going.

An example of real life tactics can be found in almost every family and even though the mechanics of what is required by all those who are on both sides of an operation, the results prove that love really is a positive side of humanity that is divine in itself.

Ralph B. Hathaway