Sandwiched between Gabe the Transformer and True Perspective

   It’s been a stressful few days around our house. To protect the privacy of the people who already think I write too much about them, I won’t go into all the details. Let it suffice to say that not a single person in our house has been spared from a series of first-world problems. But God has a way of providing perspective in the middle of my pity parties.

Back to the first-world problems.     Although there were a couple of fairly important issues to come up in the week, the issue that has consumed the most time is a family-wide switch to new iPhones. After a total of 6 hours at the cell phone store, E seemed to have no issues with his move to the 6S. My bride of nearly 23 years faced the same problem that has occurred with every upgrade of the past decade: Somehow, she and I had the same iCloud account. For a while, we all shared the account. So, with every upgrade, we all got each other’s text messages and FaceTime notifications. The account was under my name, but my wife’s birthday and neither of our security questions. It was a hot mess.

     All that was compounded this time. A’s phone was a lemon. It wouldn’t respond to the simplest of commands. She’s 17. This kind of incident is paramount to a complete failure of the electrical grid and a national security breach. Her. Life. Was. Over. Me? Well, my notes and pictures didn’t transfer. That wouldn’t be a problem except I had quite a few passwords and email addresses stored in these irretrievable spaces. I groused. A lot. I’m good at it.

     These issues pretty much consumed the better part of two days, until I got a dose of reality in the form of a Facebook post—not one of those cheesy, narrated Sarah McLachlan videos, but a genuine, real life moment involving people I know, people who are close to me. Ande Norton and her husband, Joey, are parents of two boys. Trey (he goes by Joe now, but he’ll always be Trey to me), and Gabriel: Gabe, or as his Chattooga County daddy pronounces it, GAY-brul.

     Gabe has been celebrating a series of firsts for the past couple of weeks that have brought tears of joy, inspiration and a reminder that we take far too much for granted. Gabe spends most of his waking hours in a wheelchair. Cerebral palsy gives his muscles wrong messages that makes walking virtually impossible, not that he isn’t willing to try.

     Now 12, Gabe qualified, for the first time, for a motorized wheelchair that gives him new-found independence and the ability to do something about which most of us never give a second thought: the ability to stand. His new wheels are black and high tech. The chair looks like a cross between a robotic bomb diffuser and a Transformer. It has multiple moving parts that work in concert to take Gabe from a 7.5 mph stroll to standing upright in a matter of seconds.
     A couple of Sundays back, Gabe, using his new Transformer, stood independently, for the first time in his life, to sing during worship. He had never been able to do that before, and Gabe loves music and to worship. It was beautiful and remarkable. The moment that Gabe's mom captured on Facebook was, for most of us, as mundane a task you could imagine. This day, Gabe used his chair to navigate to his family’s kitchen, where, for the first time ever, he made his own lunch, a sandwich. A sandwich. I was bemoaning lost passwords and pictures that are most likely backed up on Facebook and Instagram. I was whining about having to call tech support, while a miracle celebration was happening across town. There he is, standing with a butter knife in his hand, clearly having the time of his life.

     Suddenly passwords and digital photos didn’t matter. The other issues that had distracted my family, faded into the background. I was reminded of Paul’s words to the Corinthians:

      For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

     P.S. Focusing on the eternal is important. It should come first, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have needs and desires in this present life. Ande and Joey didn’t ask me to do this, but it’s the right thing to do. Gabe is maturing. He needs privacy and independence. So, they are remodeling their modest home to accommodate a den and accessible bathroom for Gabe. It’s an expensive undertaking, even with Joey doing most of the work himself. They have set up a Go Fund Me page to raise money to cover the cost of materials and any hired contractors necessary. If you’d like to help Gabe be even more independent, visit his page, and make a donation.