“The kingdom of God is like a besieged city surrounded on all
sides by death. Each man and woman has a place on the wall to defend and no one can stand
where another stands. But nothing prevents us from calling encouragement to one
another.”
-- Martin Luther
Courage – an enigmatic quality. I marvel when faced with it.
When it comes, one is usually in straits of circumstance or character. From the outside
looking in, it is hard to imagine anyone weathering the storm. It forms like a hard stone
in one’s stomach and feels like pushing with all your might through a wall as solid
as granite. Aaron Capehart, 12, and in a two-year protocol fighting t-cell leukemia put it
well. When I asked how he faced painful treatments, he said, “It has to be done,
because if I don’t get the shots, I won’t get rid of cancer.”
That’s how it usually plays out. Very matter of fact. Let me
tell you a little more about Aaron. I met him on my son’s majors TVNLL team, the
Angels. Bald under his hat, he played consistently, even smacking a home run, before he
was sidelined with a broken wrist from a slide into second base.
I asked if he ever felt he didn’t have the courage to face the
treatments; if he ever felt like he just didn’t have what it took that day. Referring
to twenty weeks of l-asparginase shots, shots painful enough that 3 nurses lined up –
two on one side, and 1 on the other – all with large syringes, who on a countdown
from 3, jab the serum into Aaron’s legs -- he said yes, about 15 out of the 20 times
he got those shots, he didn’t think he had the courage to do it.
His mother, Diane, said Aaron had always hated shots and used to
“freak out” in the face of one. “He was very brave with those shots. He
never let out a peep.” In their 44th week of treatment, Diane is now administering
weekly shots to Aaron. Having just held my daughter down “one more time” as
nurses tried to thread an i.v. line in a hidden vein, I empathized. The next week I went
through an assisted living home with my friend as she considered placing her Mom there.
Her white face and anguished expression again brought that pit. I wondered if courage had
a limit, and if my supply or my friend’s supply or the world’s supply, would
prove inadequate.
Amazingly it doesn’t. A few days later, a friend told me she
had just returned from a month with her mother who had suffered a stroke. This week I
watched Eric and Pati Walz award money intended for their son Ryan’s college
education to six others, whom they hoped would carry on in his behalf. Ryan was killed
last October in a car crash. Aaron attended our last games with a cast.
“It’s funny,” Diane Capehart said, “I would read
about a family going through an illness or leukemia and I would just cry my eyes out. I
would think, ‘I could never do that.’ From somewhere you just muster the courage
and energy to do it.” Martin Luther’s words ring out to me. We can’t take
anyone’s place on the wall, but by all means, we can shout encouragement.