to get himself dressed that afternoon. He refused the wheelchair, picked up his crutches, and headed down the hallway of 5B at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital (his second home for the past two years). As he slowly crutched his way down the long hallway to the elevator, somehow he found enough energy to muster up a smile and wave to each of the nurses as he passed by their stations. I marveled at how Zach, in the midst of his intense suffering, had learned to live outside of it. He did not allow what he suffered to contain or define him. At the tender age of sixteen, he was teaching me, his mother who was decades older, how to truly live and find joy each day. I started thinking about the lessons he was teaching me by the way he chose to live his life. And I started thinking about how he had something to teach our hurting world. BE EMPATHETIC. Zach had an enormous capacity for empathy; the ability to put himself in another’s shoes. He took the time to pause and connect with those he met, no matter how brief that time was; and his ability to understand people helped him to think outside of himself while battling cancer. Being empathetic oftentimes freed him from the temptation to despair in his own circumstances. Even when things got really hard for him, Zach knew there was someone out there who had it much worse than he did, and somehow that made his own suffering easier to bear. LIVE IN THE PRESENT. We live in this very small space in time called “the present.” We learned early on in the battle not to squander the joy that can be found in the moment by worrying about a future that doesn’t exist yet. We can spend enormous amounts of time and energy speculating on what may or may not happen and, in the end, most of the time, it just doesn’t matter. Tomorrow will come, but not today. JOY AND HAPPINESS ARE DIFFERENT. Happiness depends on things outside of ourselves and is fleeting; joy comes from within despite our circumstances. Look for joy every day and nurture it. With every moment of joy comes a choice to allow it, or to stifle it with resentment, anger, and bitterness. Our attitude tends to follow that which we dwell on.
Emphasize the joy! In your thoughts and conversations with others, make the moments of joy the starting point rather than the afterthought. Hard days are full of beautiful moments; look for them and embrace them. It is in the deepest suffering that the sweetest joy can be found. SUFFERING CAN BE A CHANNEL OF GRACE. Suffering gives us the platform of a story that people will listen to. The way we suffer matters! We all have a distaste and fear of suffering. When we suffer, people pay attention; they want to see how we do it. If we remember that our trials are a part of a bigger plan and that ultimately, by our example, we are sharing our faith, then our suffering can be an effective tool of evangelization. Offering the story of our suffering for God to use as He chooses is a powerful way of unleashing grace into the world. Unbelievable and extraordinary things can happen when we unite our suffering with God’s grace. DON’T LET FEAR OR CIRCUMSTANCES STOP YOU. Zach didn’t start writing songs or singing until the last year of his life. Zach had a crash course in how to live life to the fullest by not allowing fear to rule him. He didn’t have the luxury of believing he had a long future to figure things out, and he didn’t have the burden of believing he had a lot to lose by taking risks. He was willing to share himself and make himself vulnerable to share a message he needed to share. He set his suffering aside and worked through a tough time to create something beautiful when many would have closed themselves up and turned inward. As a result of his willingness to share himself despite his grim circumstances, he was able to achieve some amazing things in the last months before he died. MAKE THE WORLD BETTER. At Zach’s visitation, I had several teenagers tell me that he changed their day by simply acknowledging them. Zach was passionate about making life better for those around him. A simple smile at someone who is hurting can turn their day completely around. A word of encouragement or sympathy can give someone the strength they need to move forward. Oftentimes we get hung up in thinking that we need to do something profound and big to make a real difference in our world. There are big things that we can do to bring hope
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Offering the story of our suffering for God to use as He chooses is a powerful way of unleashing grace into the world.
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HOMELIFE MAY 2015