In a couple of weeks I’ll be fifty years old. This birthday will be remembered by me not so much for hitting the half-century mark but for a virus commonly known as infectious mononucleosis.
Yes, I have adult mono. No, I haven’t been kissing anyone lately (other than my wife), thank you. I’ve lived with this malady for five months without the foggiest notion of how I contracted it or when it will go away. It’s not something you fight with pills and trips to the doctor.
Mono is persistent and decimating. Within five hours of arising each morning, I abruptly collapse in total fatigue, as if someone shuts off the energy valve. My body no longer responds to the directives of my brain.
Being intense, somewhat driven, perpetually guilty of over-scheduling, and then pushing myself to the limit to keep all my promises has only exacerbated my discomfort. But, like it or not, at about 1 P.M. every day, my energy tank runs dry, and I’m through until morning. The number of unreturned phone calls, unfinished letters, and missed meetings doesn’t matter. Even if I took six months off and went fishing, by 1 P.M. I wouldn’t care about fish, lakes, or time off-only about lying down for the next twelve hours.
One of my friends, a well-meaning Job’s comforter, suggested that I monitor this experience, especially my attitudes toward it, to see what I could learn. Halfheartedly I began to track my thoughts and responses. Rather quickly, I realized I was associating a looming energyless fiftieth birthday with unusually frequent thoughts about my mortality.
I also realized I was spiritually tired of being physically tired. There’s an enormous difference between fatigue produced by long hours, hard work, and difficult problems, and fatigue induced by an energy-draining illness. The latter penetrates the soul with a creeping sense of uselessness, worthlessness, and helplessness.
Finally, my mental note taking revealed a deep fear of entrapment. I could do nothing about this situation-no medicine I could take, no physician’s orders I could follow, no therapy to employ. I was boxed in until this condition went away. Until then I might have enough daily energy to let everyone know I’m still here-restless, inquisitive, concerned, anxious, irritable, depressed-but unable to carry my share of the workload. It’s like being strapped in a straitjacket and then slowly pushed toward a pit. So much for monitoring.
Help came from an unexpected source. One evening I flipped on the TV and saw Mike Wallace-caustic, feisty Mike, skewer of the best and brightest. As the sound came on, I heard Mike say, “. . . and she is one of the most impressive-if not the most impressive-ladies I’ve ever interviewed. She has my highest admiration.” The lady was Beverly Sills, the internationally acclaimed opera singer who directs the New York Opera Company. The dialogue revealed that Ms. Sills struggled unrecognized and unrewarded for many years. She was refused entry into the prestigious American opera circles. After repeated rejections, she went to Europe and slowly built a reputation with tough European audiences through her brilliant singing and acting-until American critics were forced to recognize her.
But the heart of the interview was not about music but about her triumph over personal pain and heartbreak. Ms. Sills is the mother of two handicapped children, one of whom is severely retarded. She lost everything when her home on Martha’s Vineyard, purchased to escape the demanding life of New York City, burned to the ground two days before moving in.
As I watched, I was captivated by her radiant spirit. Every response breathed contentment and serenity. Laughter punctuated her phrases, but her wit never became flippant or fatalistic. Though she had clearly experienced pain and loss, she took an impish delight in the fact that close friends call her “Bubbles.”
When Mike asked how she had been able to integrate the great triumphs with the defeats, she answered, “I choose to be cheerful. Years ago I realized that I often had little or no choice about success, circumstances, or even happiness; but I knew I could choose to be cheerful.”
It doesn’t take much observation to discover there aren’t many cheerful people in the world, even among Christians. And yet the admonition of our Lord is, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). It’s interesting that this directive was given during the uncertainties, unsettledness, and premonitions of the Upper Room encounter. These words are the connecting link between Christ’s announcement that he would soon be leaving his followers and his prayer that the Father would protect them from the Evil One.
Pondering these dynamics has affirmed a basic truth for me: the importance of choosing does not diminish with age and illness. To choose is to engage the gears of life; to choose correctly is to engage life correctly.
As a younger man just entering the ministry, I was told that choosing correctly would determine the future. Right choices would become the rails on which my life would run. As I made those choices, I also subconsciously sensed that if I somehow chose incorrectly, the advantages of youth would provide enough time and energy to recoup some of my losses.
As we get older, the recouping options diminish with increasing rapidity. But no circumstance can ever take away my freedom to choose how I will respond to my circumstances.
To choose, to engage correctly, has taken on far greater significance than it did twenty-five years ago. There are still so many rails to be laid, and they must be laid carefully and prayerfully.
I choose life. I choose hard work. I choose faith, hope, and love. I choose unity, commitment, and obedience. Most of all, I choose cheerfulness.
Paul D. Robbins is executive vice-president of Christianity Today, Inc.
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