By The Side of The Suffering

A Mysterious Paralysis

When 14 year old Shane Roof told his dad Darrel Roof that he was not feeling well as they both mowed the lawn before a family cookout for Mother's Day at their home in Louisville, Kentucky, he did not think anything of it, recounts Caitlin Keating.

"I told him to go into the house and lay down," Darrel says of the incident. "When I walked in about  an hour later he said his leg was feeling funny."

Not even three hours later, Shane, a straight - A athlete who had no prior medical history and was looking forward to his upcoming 8th grade graduation, would be rushed to Norton's Children Hospital after those mild symptoms quickly took a turn for the worst: A mysterious paralysis.

Endless unknowns

At the hospital, Shane was struggling to breathe and move his body. After ruling out a tick bite or lyme disease, he was diagnosed with a spinal cord infarction, which is an interruption to the blood supply in the spinal cord. The infarction was the result of either a viral attack or stroke.

While he continues to regain more and more movement in his lower extremities, they are still at a loss over what happened.

"The prognosis is unclear and we expect a challenging road to recovery", says Dr. Montgomerry.

Darrel, 40, says they are struck in a gray area, but they are trying to remain hopeful. "We have our ups and downs because we sometimes get those bad thoughts," he says. "What if he doesn't recover from this? What the future for him?"

We want him back. They cannot give us any answers. There is no set plan. We just have unknowns, but Shane is so strong. According to his mom, Alexandra Roof, Shane is now able to move his right leg and toes, right wrist and fingers and will hopefully be moving to the Frazier Rehab Institute in Kentucky in the next week or two.

He also has a cuffed tracheostomy that blocks his vocal cords. When his lungs get stronger, they will switch it out for a speaking valve, but for now, they are forced to lip read. When they cannot understand what he is saying, Darrel made a headband with a laser light so Shane can spell out a word from a poster board that has the alphabet written on it.

"It's so hard as a parent to see our child in pain and not be able to comfort him," she says. "We are moving forward, which is a good thing. We continue to remain positive and help him stay strong."

Pushing Forward

Darrel & Alexandra have spent everyday with Shane at the hospital and sleep in his hospital room each night. "We have had an unbelievable amount of friends and family supporting us," he says. "We want to be here and we want to be comforting for our son."

It also helps Shane's parents to see how strong he has been through the entire ordeal. "Shane is amazingly tough. He has expressed to us that he wants to go home," says Darrel. "I think he understands and is staying optimistic. He is taking it really well. He is super strong willed and loving." This case is but one of the many unresolved enigmatic ailments.

The Why of Suffering

It sounds mysterious, but God is always on the side of the suffering. In the local scene, garbage dump disaster and floods left many people suffering in its wake. Hundred of families lost  their loved ones. Others have been displaced from their homes. Then came the dengue epidemic. In the face of all these, we may be wondering about the why of such human sufferings?

The chain of whys and wherefores  will be interminable,  unless we turn our gaze to Christ crucified. The final answer is found in Jesus Christ who "emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross". (Phil 2: 7 - 8)

Why did Jesus suffer so much bloody tortures as He went through His Passion and Death on Calvary? What evil has He done to deserve all these?

Suffering was transformed by God into a means of redemption. It would be the instrument by which God will show His almighty love and power. He will lay down His life for our sake and will take it up again.

Jesus' omnipotence is manifested precisely in the fact that He freely accepted suffering. He could have chosen not to do so. He could have chosen to demonstrate His omnipotence even at the crucifixion. In fact, it was proposed to Him: "Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe." (Mrk 15 : 32)

But He did not accept that challenge. The fact that He stayed on the cross until the end, the fact  that on the Cross He could say, as do all who suffer: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34), has remained in human history the strongest argument. If the agony on the Cross had not happened, the truth that God is love would have been unfounded.

Yes! God is love & precisely for this He gave His son, to reveal Himself completely as Love. Christ is the One who "loved to the end" (Jn 13:1).  "To the end" means to the last breath. "To the end"means accepting all the consequences of man's sin,  taking it upon Himself.

All these happened exactly as Prophet Isaiah affirmed: " It was our infirmities that he bore. We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way. But the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all." (Is 53: 4 - 6).

Suffering Servant of Yahweh

That mysterious "Suffering Servant of Yahweh" in the book of Isaiah is Jesus. The "Man of Suffering" is the revelation of that Love which "endures all things" (1 Cor 13: 7), of that Love which is the "greatest" (Verse 13). It is the revelation not only that God is love but also the One who "pours out love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit" (Rom 5:5).

In the end, before Christ Crucified, the man who shares in redemption will have the advantage over the man who sets himself up as an unbending judge of God's actions in his own life as well as in that of all humanity.

Thus we find ourselves at the centre of the history of salvation. The judgement of God becomes a judgment of man. The divine realm and the human realm of this event meet, cross and overlap.

Christianity is a religion of salvation. It is a soteriological religion, to use the theological term. In the New Testament the Greek, word Soteria means rescue or safety whether physically or morally, deliver, save, health.

Christian soteriology focuses on the Paschal Mystery. In order to hope for salvation from God, man must stop beneath Christ's Cross. Then, the Sunday after the Holy Sabbath, he must stand in front of the empty tomb and listen, like the women of Jerusalem: "He is not here, for He has been raised" (Mt. 28:6)

Contained within the Cross and the Resurrection is the certainty that God saves man, that He saves him through Christ, through His Cross and His Resurrection.

Thus, when we choose to identify ourselves with the suffering of Jesus in His Passion and Death on the Cross, we find meaning in our sufferings, trials, ailments, etc. God transforms them and grants them redeeming value.