…But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on…Philippians 3:13-14
Some days, the most difficult thing for us to do is throw back the covers of our bed, put our feet on the floor, and stand up. The challenges our children face, the indignities they sometimes suffer, the uncertainty of it all can put us in a mood for staying put.
But like the apostle Paul, we must press on.
We are walking a path upon which God himself has put us. The walk is as important — perhaps more important — than anything else we do. Our life with our disabled child is more about others than about us. We are part of something bigger, something more valuable, and something more eternal than us.
Our child’s needs must rule our lives. His future, his dreams, his life depend on us and we must answer the call no matter how hard it can become. Some days, we feel as if we live in a box. We feel hemmed in. We feel shackled to his disability.
Still, we must press on.
The needs of our friends, our neighbors, and our community come ahead of our own. This path we walk is one on which we are being watched. The people around us take note of our manner, our struggle, and the way in which we cope. The desire to wallow, to give up, to complain about the path we walk must not deter us.
We must press on.
The challenge of this life is multi-faceted. So, too, the value of how we choose to live it. We are being asked, encouraged, and called to live it with dignity and grace and a determination made not of us but of our faith in God. We must open ourselves up to his love and his help — his Spirit at work inside us — so that we might teach those around us how to open themselves up to his help with their own challenges.
We could surrender. We could throw up our hands. We could take the kudos and applause of the world for some of the things we have already done and take a seat. But our child would suffer from such a static existence. So, too, our witness.
We must press on.
Rather than surrender, we must focus our faith and our hope on the cross. We must use it as marker, the dot on that far horizon toward which we walk. A call for us is not just to live, not just to be of faith, not just to hang in but determined to live life fully and abundantly.
Our call, like that of St. Paul, is to press on. We are called to action. We are called to a life in which we don’t wait, a life in which we don’t wallow, a life in which we don’t wilt. We are called to lean forward, to focus on God and be certain of nothing more than this: that we must press on.
