Just sharing your life and your struggles and letting others see how God sustains you even in the midst of pain and darkness can be an encouragement. I am learning that you don’t always need to be cheerful and smiling to be an encourager. I can encourage others just by keeping going and letting them see that the Lord is helping me. It is good to be able to serve the Lord by praying for them and with them. I really value people visiting and telling me what God is doing in their lives and in the church. Yet, wherever I am, I am still part of God’s family. Often, although I know people pray for me and love me from afar, it can feel very lonely away from the church. Zoom and YouTube are great but they aren’t the real thing. It has been very hard not being able to get to church services and have fellowship with people. I know I can trust God in the big things because I can see him working in the little things. I don’t need to worry about earning money or running a house because I have to trust that God will give others the strength and wisdom to do that. Sometimes, living in the moment is a real privilege. I have time to see God answering those prayers and to see how he is interested in the tiny little details of our lives. God has opened my eyes to see the little things in life and I can pray about them. When you have a serious illness your world becomes much smaller, but in God’s grace even that can be a blessing. The Bible says that every good and perfect gift comes from God (James 1:17) and I have been able to find much pleasure in the everyday things around me that I had not noticed before. Each day is a gift to enjoy being with my family, watching the birds and the garden grow. I need to ask God daily to help me remember my blessings. Yet, God promises that if I lean on him and trust him, he will give me the strength that I need. Still some days are hard and I feel helpless and upset that I am a burden on others. When I first received the diagnosis, there was a time of real sorrow and sadness as I mourned the things that I knew would soon be taken away from me. He wants you to know that your purpose is being his child, not what you are able to do. If you are feeling that you have no purpose, the Lord wants to tell you differently. He knows what he is doing and he is good. 14:2) and I am still precious to him despite my illness. The Lord has chosen me to be his treasured possession (Deut. I need to remind myself continually that God loves me for who I am not what I can do. Isaiah 43 verse 4 says, ‘You are precious and honoured in my sight, and … I love you.’ I need to remind myself of them constantly and though I sometimes forget, I know that he never forgets me. Here are four things that God is teaching me. It would be easy to look at me and feel that there was no purpose to my life, but that’s not what God says. When my voice gives up, I can use my eyes to slowly type a few phrases which my mechanical voice speaks out loud. I am very thankful that I have an eye-tracking device so that I can still use a computer and turn on the TV. I use a ventilator to breathe, am fed by a tube in my stomach and spend my days in a specially adapted chair. Within a year, I had lost the ability to eat and now I am losing my ability to speak. Within a few months, I was totally dependent on my wife to feed me, get me dressed and take me places. I quickly progressed to using a wheelchair and had to give up the job I loved, teaching kids to play music.
Some months later, I was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, an incurable condition in which all my muscles would stop working and eventually lead to my death. My fingers weren’t able to play the notes that they should have been playing and I knew that something wasn’t right. I was sitting at the piano on a big stage in a large concert venue, something I had done many times before, but this time my hands were heavy.