Parkinson's and Persecution

I continue to be amazed and thankful for how God uses my work and patients to teach me lessons about faith. Today I had the opportunity to work with a 74 year old man who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the past month. He was feeling down about how he now has difficulty walking, how he doesn’t speak as loudly as he did in the past, and more than anything that he felt that there was no hope for his life. He went on for almost an hour about how he can no longer hold a book, he cannot see because of failing vision, and that he was disappointed that he would now never be able to finish the project he had started about two months before of reading the Bible.

Reading the Bible has become very important to this gentleman because he only accepted Jesus as his Savior and began going to church for the first time 4 years ago at the ripe old age of 70. He said that at that point in his life he felt that he had better give up his “bad ways” and get right with the lord. Now, after all of this, he told me that he feels that it is all over….that it is lost.

It was very touching to hear this man’s story, and to be able to talk with him about his diagnosis and his faith. Because he had not really had the opportunity to learn much about his newly diagnosed condition. He felt that he was terminal and hopeless. Because he is new to his faith, and walk with God, he felt that his salvation was hopeless and eternally over. As we talked, and were open and honest about the two separate things that are going on in his life, it was almost as if a light went off in his mind and in his heart and something changed on the inside of this man. A light that melted away the cold, hopeless disposition that he had developed, and had provided a guide to him through the dark valley that he entered just a month before.

The session was a success both for God and for Speech Pathology, but I took away something big from this interaction. I realized that too often we are given a label, from others, that is meant to classify us and to categorize us. From a medical standpoint it helps us understand what is going on with the patient and the appropriate course of action to help them. But, it is possible, that this label, without proper education, can actually be counterproductive.

In a similar way, labels that we acquire in our hearts and in our minds can have negative effects. I think that the Devil uses similar ways to categorize us, label us, and diminish us into believing that all is hopeless, and that all is over. Labels and negative thoughts are used by the enemy to persecute us and to keep us from achieving and living the life that God has intended for us. It is true that like Jacob we may walk with a limp for the rest of our lives, but we have to keep in mind that God is the one that guides our steps and that at any moment a change can come.

The truth is that nothing is over until God says that it is over and that we have walked our last step for Him, said our last words for Him, and breathed our last breath for Him. We ended the session with a prayer that neither of us ever let the natural world define us or back us into a corner without remembering that with God all things are possible.

“Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17