Do What You Can by Dr. Lynnette Simm
My family and I are participating in a 5k obstacle course race tomorrow. None of us are particularly fit for this race, but as a family we are going to do what we can together. My husband, Madison, is encouraging us by saying, “We are going to try anything and do our best. If we can’t get over a wall—okay. Let’s be proud of our effort. I don’t care about the result.”
He is can be so insightful to what we need to hear, what our hearts need to keep going. Madison has been known to raise the bar just as we touch it, but that’s because he knows we have more in us, sometimes just a little bit more. However, he has never left us hanging. He has given more leg-ups than I can count. His shoulders have been broader than I thought possible, and his belief in us is stronger than our own.
Madison is a God-send.
I have told him several times that I have no idea who I would be without him. He would say, “You’d be amazing just as you are now.” I have to confess that I even cry just hugging him because I feel God’s love for me, securing me with his warm, strong hands. There are times I am overwhelmed by Madison’s love that I KNOW I’m feeling Jesus’s love for me.
Why am I telling you all this now? Well it’s not because of the 5k tomorrow. It’s because as we speak his father and my mother are battling cancer. His mother and my father are getting overwhelmed as caretakers. Our daughters are wrestling with college journeys and becoming adults. I’m struggling to get my seminary class work done, ministry work done, help our family, and the laundry done. And my beloved Madison is still helping everyone while working a full time job, because as he says, “Someone has to pay for all this.”
I am not writing all this so people will see what an AMAZING husband I have, yet, that is true. I am sharing this about my husband because we need someone to be our rock, our leg up, our shoulder. And as I feel like life is crushing me, I feel God’s hands holding me up as my husband holds me tight while I cry or exhale.
Some of you have a person like my Madison, some of you desperately need a Madison. While my beloved husband seems like a saint or an angel, I know he is merely a man. A man who the Lord is using in our family. God uses us all to help one another, to bare all with one another, and to love one another. While Madison is amazing, GOD IS AWESOME.
Remember when someone is by your side, knee deep in the mud, giving you a shoulder to cry on, or a leg up over the obstacles in life, they are merely the hands and feet of God. Thank them for not only hearing the Lord, but for listening and helping. But make sure to thank the Lord, for all good things come from HIM!