It didn’t take many hours to read all I could find at home about Parkinson’s. I hadn’t known very much about it previously. My first research didn’t paint a very pretty picture. I began to be overly concerned about my husband and children, imagining how they would have to suffer too. The thought that was always on my mind was, “I can’t be to them what I’ve always been.”

As soon as I could get an address, I sent off to the American Parkinson’s Foundation for more information. After browsing through some of the booklets and reading others about Parkinson’s, I began to get DEPRESSED.

I don’t think that in my life I had ever really understood what real depression was like. I had heard about it, and knew that it had a power to stop normal functioning in one’s life, but I hadn’t experienced it.

During this time I heard something that I identified with--that depression always involves LOSS. It amazed me that a friend’s observation was so close to my thoughts. She said, “Mary Jo, I think you are mourning your loss; the loss of the person you have always been, the way you have always operated.” I felt a challenge to accept my new self, as well as the new way of living, with all its limitations, to bring about a useful, productive, satisfied and happy life.

In retrospect, there are two very important factors that helped me cope, helped me to move forward, and to continue to cope.

1) The first is my faith in the Word of God and the promises of a loving God, seeing Him as an all-powerful and all-sovereign, faithful God, who has a purpose for my life. For many years prior to this, I had loved God’s Holy Word; and I still read it every day. In no other place did I find such peace. The more I read, the more I was aware of a returning mental clarity that had started fading with the disease. There seemed to be a correlation between time spent in God’s Word and clear thinking. There was a return to the joy of living one day at a time. The Lord took away the depression, and it hasn’t returned to this day.

2) The second factor that has been most instrumental in helping me cope is the love and support of my husband and children. My husband’s love for me is my greatest earthly blessing, my richest treasure. I pray that we will both have the wisdom and patience to accept and encourage each other, as the disease progresses. Our children, as well, play such an important part in that needed blessing of support. It thrills me when they take the initiative to keep in touch. Hardly a week goes by without a visit and/or call from each of them. The assurance of their prayers, love and encouragement seems to have brought us even closer as a family and deepened our relationship to our Heavenly Father.

I have already hinted that my view of a loving, sovereign God is so much richer. As I have come to know Him and His love, mostly through His Word, I know that He wants the very best for my life. When I stretch my mind and grasp hold of the immense thought of a truly sovereign God, who is in control of EVERYTHING, and realizing that HE LOVES ME, and that HE HAS A PURPOSE FOR EACH LIFE, how could I hold my life back from Him? I had to say, “If you can use my life better with this disease, I am willing. If my life would have a greater testimony if you healed me, I know you can heal me, and I am willing. If you choose to take me home earlier than what’s normal, to be with you, I’m willing in this too.”

I haven’t always been able to say that so boldly. But one day I read a statement in His Word that fascinated me. It is in the book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, made a decree that everyone should worship his golden image, and if they didn’t, they would be thrown into a fiery furnace. Three Jewish boys who loved God refused to bow down, so they were reported. As they stood before the king, they testified fearlessly. “The God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand.” And then they say, “But if not, it won’t make us serve and worship you.” So I can say, “My God is able to heal me, but if he doesn’t I’ll still serve Him and love Him forever.”

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” (II Corinthians 4:16) Therefore I pray for you and for me as Paul did:

“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”