Life can be hard, but don’t forget to laugh

This week, I sat down to pay a medical bill. It wasn’t the entire bill, but just my portion.

It came to about $5,300.

That’s the co-pay for my wife’s new prosthetic legs. And that’s after insurance did what insurance does, which is a separate conversation best handled with prayer, patience, and possibly a therapist (who also requires a deductible and co-pay).

On top of that, I’ve had a few medical issues myself lately. A biopsy this week, an MRI last month. More bills trickling in. You don’t even wait for the mail any more. They find you online now.

If what we believe is true, then suffering is not meaningless or random, and it is not final.

So I did what I have done for 40 years of caregiving. I paid what I could and planned the rest while waiting for the insurance payments to sort out.

In four decades, with nearly a hundred surgeries for my wife, every provider — and in a medical journey like hers, there have been many — has always worked with me. Particularly when I showed the initiative and talked with the provider first.

But this week, I didn’t just plan a payment; I accidentally paid the whole thing. All of it. In one click.

There’s a special kind of silence that fills the room when you realize what you have just done. It’s not panic or fear, but that slow, sinking realization that you have just made a very enthusiastic financial decision you did not intend to make.

I immediately called the provider. The person I spoke with voided the payment, set me up on something more manageable, and reassured me that I was not the first person to make such a mistake. Since it was caught on the same day, everything would be fine.

I thanked the reassuring person, hung up, sat there for a moment, and then laughed.

I laughed because it brought to mind a PSA I helped put together years ago during National Caregiver Awareness Month. We riffed on the comic “you might be a redneck …” routine and did it about family caregivers.

Caregiving gives you plenty of material for that sort of routine.

If a hospital bed has ever hampered your love life … you might be a caregiver.

If you’re the one asking for a price check on suppositories … you might be a caregiver.

If you’ve ever hooked up your dog to your wife’s wheelchair just to see if it would work … you might be a caregiver. (It does work — but watch out for squirrels.)

And after that phone call, I laughed because I could add another one: If you’ve ever financed your wife’s prosthetic legs … you might be a caregiver.

This is how we have learned to shoulder the immensity of what we carry.

We live in a culture where outrage is currency and perspective is in short supply. Outrage and victimhood are easy to perform. Caregiving isn’t. When someone you love is suffering, she doesn’t need a performance.

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Caregiving chips away at those cultural indulgences. Bills still come, and bodies still break. Responsibilities don’t pause so that you can craft the perfect complaint. You either learn to carry it, or it crushes you.

If you’re going to endure this, you also learn to laugh. Not because things are easy, but because this isn’t the end.

Scripture tells us there is a time to weep and a time to laugh.

We weep in hospital rooms. We weep in quiet moments when the weight of it all settles in. We weep while watching helplessly as someone we love struggles.

But we also laugh because we are refusing to let the pain define us.

And for the Christian, that refusal is not rooted in being naturally strong or optimistic, but in what we believe to be true. That truth requires something of us, especially in our darkest moments.

If what we believe is true, then suffering is not meaningless or random, and it is not final.

God is not absent from it. If He is Lord at all, then He is Lord of all. The promise of the gospel is not that we learn to cope better, but that Christ redeems completely.

Right now, my wife uses prosthetic legs. Right now, we deal with bills, setbacks, and the daily logistics of a body that has endured more than most people can imagine. But a day is coming when all that will change. No prosthetics, pain, or co-pays. No fragile bodies that wear out under the strain of this world.

Until then, we live here. So yes, we weep. But we also laugh — sometimes right after accidentally trying to pay $5,300 we don’t have. For now, we still crack a smile, even with tears on our cheeks.

“Ten more payments … and you can walk anywhere you want, baby!”

I reach for her hand and help her stand. She chuckles. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s not the end.