Ketchup lessons

On the ceiling high above me, a smoke detector broke into a series of shrill, piercing shrieks. I bounded across my kitchen and threw open a sliding glass door to vent the smoke. But it wasn’t enough. Not for the smoke alarm, anyway, though all I’d done was leave olive oil in a skillet a touch too long.

Next to the sound of an open-mouthed chewer, a shrieking smoke detector has to be the most nerve-racking sound on earth. In the end, I had to silence the infernal thing with the end of a broomstick.

But then, as soon as the shrieking stopped, blessing arrived.

I’d just moved into the house two weeks before and didn’t yet know its rhythms. Now, with the slider open and the alarm silent, I could hear birdsong: carried in from the Colorado savanna, a chorus of robins, bluebirds, and black-billed magpies.

I knew in that moment that if I hadn’t suffered the aural assault, I would not have opened the door, and if I hadn’t opened the door, I would not have heard the birdsong.

It was an excellent exchange.

A lot of you have asked me for an update on my cervical dystonia, and I can now say it is also an excellent exchange. I wouldn’t have chosen this disability, that’s for sure. But God ordained it, I trust Him, and I’m beginning to see the fruit His Word promises in many places (Romans 5:3–5, James 1:2–4, Hebrews 12:10–11, and more).

In case you’re just catching up, cervical dystonia is a neuromuscular disorder that causes involuntary head movements. In my case, my head turns left without my permission, and in summer 2024, the condition became disabling.

Until recently, my attitude had been, this won’t change my life; I’ll just have to make some adjustments. Now, I know that’s not true at all.

I can’t sit at a desk or dining table, or in a church pew or any chair for any length of time, without an assistive device or reclined.

I can’t write with a pen. My head twists away from the page uncontrollably. It’s difficult even to sign my name.

I can’t “hop on a Zoom,” as we now do for meetings and interviews in the journalism biz, since I can’t look steadily into a camera.

I can’t drive far—head-twisting doesn’t work well for other motorists (!!)—and if I were standing or walking with you, I would ask you to remain on my left, since that’s the way my head (un)naturally turns.

That’s a lot of can’ts. But this trial has also yielded many cans.

The spiritual benefits of suffering are well known: the destruction of our illusion of self-sufficiency. Spiritual purification and deeper trust in God. The awakening of spiritual seriousness and dependence that comfort often obscures. Writing from quadriplegia after a diving accident, Joni Eareckson Tada describes disability itself as both grievous and spiritually transformative. Henri Nouwen describes it as the great unmasker of modern achievement culture.

All that could be my before-and-after, my excellent exchange. I was woefully self-sufficient; now I must rely on God’s grace. I thought I was spiritually serious until suffering revealed how shallow I still was. Now, I am in a season of serious spiritual reformation. Meanwhile, you wouldn’t believe all the things I’d planned to achieve before I die, cascades of new ideas even now, in my 60s.

“Stormtroopers,” human performance strategist Greg McKeown would call them: seductive pursuits that drain life without adding meaning. I had a million of ’em.

Today, though, I am not planning to launch a digital publishing company. Instead, I am enjoying the mornings when I can lean over my skillet—while not burning the olive oil—and marvel at the simple miracle of an egg. I am not dreaming of becoming a great novelist. Instead, I am teaching my 16-­­month-old grandson how to dip his fish sticks in ketchup … and wondering whether ketchup lessons might pack more eternal punch than any publishing venture.

There are some days when all I can do is lie down. There is a winnowing underway, a pruning. Where it leads, I do not know. But my pastures are green and my Shepherd is kind.