My brother is not quiet by nature, but when we were kids, he learned to keep things close to his chest.
Shortly after my lupus diagnosis at twelve, he and I were in the backseat of the family station wagon, sitting patiently as the car idled at a stoplight. I remember watching him look out the window and thinking:
Wow. I’m the sick kid, but he’s the well one. I’m getting all this attention, but he has to carry everything alone now. I wonder if he is afraid.
Then the red light was green. I never thought about it again, until decades later when I was writing a book about our family’s journey through illness. The focus had so often been on me. It is important to realize that the weight that the “well one” has to haul is often heavier than that of the sick child. At least the sick child always has other arms ready to help with the burden. The well child is often on his own, whether that is directly communicated by the family or it is self-inflicted isolation.
I mentioned this in a recent women’s conference. It wasn’t a planned part of my presentation; I just mentioned the burden of the “well one” and moved on. Afterward, a woman walked up to me and thanked me.
She was the well one.
She said her brother had been diagnosed with cancer when they were children, and she remembers coming home with sad or bad or exciting or happy news from school, and feeling like she didn’t want to say anything to her parents because they were already so worried about her brother. They had enough on their minds, she thought. So she just kept things to herself and carried both her large concerns and her small pleasures all alone.
“I would gladly bear it again,” she told me. “I am not begrudging my brother one bit of the attention he needed. And he is fine now. But I have never heard anyone acknowledge me and my role as the well child. I did carry quite a bit, trying to keep out of the way. That’s a lot for a kid. I think I just needed to hear someone say it once. I don’t resent my childhood or need anything extra from my brother or my parents now. I guess I just mean … thanks for remembering me today. That’s all I needed.” She was smiling when she hugged me. For her, it seemed like a moment of closure that she hadn’t realized she’d been craving.
If you are the parents of both a sick and a well child, there is freedom in relying on God during this critical moment in your family’s life. Just do your best. God knows how to spread your love thick, though you may feel you are spread thin these days. He has a plan for all of your children, and He will see every plan to completion. In fact, He is probably using these unfavorable circumstances to bring about those very plans.
Yes, there is training in our trials.
It is clear that my trial as the sick child has uniquely prepared me for this moment in time. I am called to Mercy as a writer: to be a soft searchlight for those who want to find God in their darkness. And I know how to do it because I have been trained for this task since my youth. On every dark path, I learned to look for the tenderness of God.
What I can also see clearly is that my brother’s trial as the well child has uniquely prepared him for this moment in time. He is called to Justice as an attorney: to be a steady compass for those who navigate treacherous waters. And he knows how to do it because he has been trained for this task since his youth. On every choppy sea, he learned to stay stable and true to course.
God never wastes anything.
Your experiences, whatever they have been, have prepared you for service. Whether you were the sick child or the well child, you are remembered today. You are celebrated today. Your role has always mattered.
And it always will.
- (It’s all fun and games until the Auburn game starts.)
