In Sickness and in Health

      Sometimes when I think about how I fell in love with Randi, I can’t help but think about Sandy.  At one time I had thought that I was in love with Sandy, yet this was different.  I wasn’t falling in love with Randi because I needed to.  I was falling in love with Randi because I wanted to, and that made all the difference in the world.  I had thought that I couldn’t live without Sandy and discovered that I was miserable being with her.  I knew I could live without Randi but realized that I didn’t want to go through life without her.  I had searched my whole life for someone to love and for someone to return that love, and Randi Mathisen was the person I had been searching for.
      What makes a good marriage?  To me, marriage is about be­ing committed to your best friend.  Without the commitment, and without the love and respect that go with that commitment, there is no marriage.  Many people make the mistake of believing that love, romance, and great sex are the foundation of a good mar­riage.  I’m all for love, I’m all for romance, and I’m very much in favor of great sex, but unless both people commit everything they have, are, and hope to be to each other, a marriage will not last.
      I don’t buy into the idea that a person is to serve God first, others second, and himself third.  Although I am fully committed to loving God with all my heart, soul, and mind, God is not served in a vacuum.  As far as marriage is concerned, the best way to serve God is to be totally, absolutely, 100% committed to one’s mate.
      When a person decides to marry, he (or she) is committing himself to making his spouse his number one priority in life, for life, with no exceptions.  On May 21, 1988, Randi and I walked up the aisle of the Houghton Wesleyan Church as husband and wife.  And the commitment I made that day to Randi is a com­mitment that I made for life.  When I uttered the words “I will,” I wasn’t just committing myself to a lifetime of marriage.  I was making a sacred vow to her that our relationship comes before my family, my work, my dreams, everything.  That’s what makes a good marriage—each partner vowing that kind of commitment to his or her best friend, period.
      Now, after saying all that, I must tell you that on the morning after making that vow, I woke up with “cold feet.”  Randi had worked through all of her doubts before the wedding.  I saved mine for the honeymoon.  We had made our vows to each other a few hours earlier and had every intention of making those prom­ises last a lifetime.  However, we were both only in our twenties, and all of a sudden I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to spend the next fifty years being married to Randi.  In fact, the very idea of being married scared me to death, and for the next two days I in­stinctively pulled inside of myself and put as much emotional dis­tance between the two of us as possible.
      You may think that my second thoughts might have put a damper on our first few days together.  But Randi was determined not to let that happen.  She was on her honeymoon and meant to enjoy every minute of it.
      We had decided to spend a couple of days at Letchworth State Park, about twenty minutes up the road from Houghton.  The Genesee River runs through the center of Letchworth, and huge canyon walls rise up on each side of its banks, forming a spectacu­lar gorge.  A wooden railroad trestle crosses the river at one end of the park, and an old-fashioned stone footbridge crosses it farther downstream near the bottom of the gorge.  But the waterfalls are what really gives the park its character.  There are three of them, and together they rival even the famous Niagara Falls, a hundred miles away, in beauty.  We couldn’t have asked for a nicer place to honeymoon.  Everything was perfect.  Everything, that is, except my fear of marriage, but that didn’t last for more than a couple of days.  It’s a good thing, too, because after a very short honeymoon, Randi and I drove back to Houghton, where we spent the next few days packing.
      Nothing can fully prepare a person for marriage.  Not dating, not living together as some couples do, not anything.  How can you take two people, each with his or her own quirks, character flaws, and separate likes and dislikes, bring them together, and then expect them to commit themselves to each other for the rest of their lives?  We’re talking major adjustment here.  I was used to living by my­self, but all of a sudden I’m living with this person who never leaves.  And when she did leave, she always came back—to stay, with me, and in “my” apartment.  She was there when I got up in the morning, and she was there when I went to bed at night.  We ate together, slept together, and did almost everything else to­gether.  Randi is somewhat like cerebral palsy—she never goes away.  Not that I ever really wanted her to.  However, I used to at least be able to go into the bathroom alone.  That place isn’t even sacred anymore.
      Marriage has been good for me.  After having waited so long to find someone to fall in love with, having a wife who uncondition­ally loves me is—well, there’s nothing like it.  Yes, there was a period of adjustment.  Yes, we did our share of arguing.  But mar­riage brought healing to my life—to both of our lives.  For Randi it brought a sense of stability that had been lacking since her par­ents’ divorce.  To me it brought a level of understanding and ac­ceptance that I had never known before.  Randi had made a con­scious decision to spend the rest of her life with me, not because she had to, but because she wanted to.  I found that to be tre­mendously healing as we started our new lives together as a cou­ple.
      When Randi and I crawl into bed at night and she wraps her arms around my body and holds me tight, something magical happens inside of me.  Her touch brings healing to areas of my life so deeply scarred that I never dreamed wholeness in those areas was possible.  Randi loves me.  With every ounce of her being, she loves me.  She loves me not despite my cerebral palsy, loving everything else and tolerating the disability, but with my cerebral palsy, loving my disability because it’s so much a part of who I am.
      Randi knows all too well the struggles I’ve experienced through the years because of my disability.  She would love to see every trace of cerebral palsy gone from my life.  However, her de­sires are not motivated by feelings of selfishness but by an all-en­compassing love for me, Steve Chance, cerebral palsy and all.
      I’m not saying that marriage has erased all of the bad things in my life.  Deep down, I’m still the same guy I’ve always been.  I still struggle with insecurities, and the shame that I felt while growing up has never totally left me.  Having Randi in my life is a great help, however.  Everyone should be as blessed as I am.  She believes in me, and I can’t imagine life without her.
      Randi and I spent most of our engagement not knowing where we would be living once we were married.  Then one weekend, we were suddenly faced with the need to make a quick decision.  Randi had been on the waiting list earlier in the year for Rosemead School of Psychology, a graduate school of Biola University in La Mirada, California.  She was called one Friday afternoon and told that she had until the follow­ing Monday to decide whether she wanted to enter the program.  That was a tough weekend for us.  Three days didn’t give us much time to decide where we wanted to start our married life.  At the time, I had been searching for work up and down the East Coast and in the Midwest.  My field was student development, and I had just finished my master’s program at Buffalo State.  I had no job prospects in California, and if Randi accepted Rosemead’s offer, we had no way of knowing whether or not I would find work.  Finally, Randi and I decided that we would indeed move all the way across the country.  We figured that if we let our fears get in the way of our dreams, we could spend the rest of our lives second-guessing our decision.  So when Monday morning came, Randi placed the call to Rosemead, saying we would be in southern California in time for classes in the fall.
      That was a whirlwind summer for us.  We spent a week in Massachusetts, a week in Tennessee, and a couple of weeks in Wisconsin and Missouri before heading west.  Our intentions were to spend time with family before moving so far away.  We saw family, all right.  I felt as though we had placed our marriage on hold during the summer and were just hanging on until we reached California and had a place to call home.  Living with fam­ily is bad enough under normal conditions, but as newlyweds it was a nightmare.  We were always either visiting friends or talking with family and never had time to ourselves.  Things became so bad that one night we even left and found a hotel where we could finally be alone, without any distractions.
      Driving across country should be another no-no when you’re first married, especially driving a two-door Chevette with no air-conditioning.  The Midwest was bad enough, but the desert was unbearable.  Looking back on the trip, I don’t know how we made it.  Randi had had her driver’s license for only a few months and wasn’t used to long-distance car trips.  That left me to do most of the driving.  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my personality can take a sudden turn for the worse when I become overtired, and driving eight to ten hours a day for six days straight was almost more than I could handle.  I remember stopping at the Grand Canyon and arguing afterward with my new wife about which of us would drive first.  Randi wanted me to get us out of the crowded parking lot and said that she could take over from there.  That sounds like a reasonable re­quest, doesn’t it?  Not if you’ve been on the road for a week, are absolutely exhausted, and don’t want to see anything but the in­side of your eyelids for the next month.
      Somehow we managed to finish the trip with our sanity intact, and by some miracle, we arrived in Norwalk, California sometime in the middle of the afternoon that next day.  The race was on.  We had $2000 left over from wedding gifts and $300 in monthly sup­port raised to go toward the salary I would earn when beginning my new position at a local Youth for Christ chapter.  Have you ever tried renting an apartment with no income except $300 in monthly pledges?  Our friends said that it couldn’t be done.  Our backs were against the wall, though, and we had to find a place to live before Randi started school.
      We started walking along what is known as “apartment row” in La Mirada until we came across a vacant apartment that we both liked.  The manager was noncommittal, but he told us to fill out an application and said that he’d get back to us.  The very next day, he called to ask when we could move in.  I couldn’t believe it.  After two-and-a-half months of marriage, we had our own apartment.  It was small and cost more than three times what I had paid for an apartment in western New York, but it was ours.
      One of Randi’s big dreams in life was to become a licensed psychologist.  I wholeheartedly supported that dream, so much so that the whole purpose of our moving to California was for her to attend Rosemead School of Psychology.  However, if we had to make the decision again, Randi wouldn’t attend Rosemead.  It is a good school with a top-notch reputation in the Christian com­munity, but that reputation has not been worth the price that we’ve had to pay for her to attend.  And I don’t mean just the financial cost of tuition, either.  Although the debt we’ve accumulated over the years in student loans has been considerable, it pales in com­parison to the toll that it’s taken on our lives in other ways.
      That first semester was pretty tough for us.  Besides encoun­tering all the adjustments that come with being newlyweds, there were all the additional pressures of school.  I’ve been a student, and I’ve been to grad school, but I’ve never seen anything as de­manding on a person’s time, energy, and emotions as Rosemead.  The doctoral program takes a minimum of five years, and the pressure to produce is horrendous.  A student is allowed only two C’s during those five years, and anyone who receives more is in jeopardy of being booted out of the program.
      In addition to the academic demands, the financial burden placed on our marriage was astronomic.  Tuition alone was more than $10,000 a year, and Randi had to take a part-time job, working twenty hours a week as the technical editor for the school’s Journal of Psychology and Theology, just to make ends meet.  Between work and studies, there was very little time for us as a couple.
      As difficult as those early years were, our troubles really be­gan shortly after the first of the year back in 1991, two-and-a-half years into Rosemead’s program and soon after Randi had been awarded her master’s degree.  We had just returned from spending Christmas with family in the Midwest when Randi started having severe headaches and muscle aches.  They were so bad that at times all she wanted to do was to take a couple of Advil and crawl back into bed until the pain went away.  The problem, however, was that the headaches and muscle aches never did go away, and soon were compounded by debilitating fatigue.  After a week or so went by, I took her to the Biola University Health Center.  The doctor blamed her headaches on tension and gave her a muscle relaxant, which did absolutely nothing at all to relieve her pain.
      The second doctor we went to, our family internist, made a diagnosis of mononucleosis.  “I’ll give her something for the head­aches,” she said reassuringly.  “Randi can expect to feel better in about six months.”
      At the time, we were very much relieved with the “mono” di­agnosis.  A lot of people come down with mono.  They’re sick for a few months, but eventually they recover.  I wish that things had been that simple.  Little did we know then that Randi’s headaches and fatigue were just the beginning of our problems.
      A year went by with no visible signs of improvement, so we started looking elsewhere for answers.  Randi’s mother told us about a specialist in Anaheim Hills, about 45 minutes from where we lived, whose practice is limited exclusively to chronically ill pa­tients.  We made an appointment, and the doctor asked a lot of questions and ordered a battery of tests.  After a few months, he finally gave a diagnosis:  Randi has chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome, or CFIDS.
      Many people overexert themselves to the point of exhaustion.  They go home, get a good night’s rest, and by the next morning are ready to go again.  People with CFIDS are different.  It does not matter how much sleep or rest they have.  They wake up feeling just as exhausted as when they went to bed the night before and then remain that way throughout the day.
      There has been a lot of confusion over the nature of CFIDS—by the medical profession, the media, and the general public—since it was identified in the 1980s.  Some confuse it with major depression, even though it has many characteristics that differentiate it from that illness.  Others assume that the disease is psychosomatic, or “all in the head.”  The media has trivialized it by dubbing it the “yuppie flu,” thereby dismissing the seriousness of the illness and implying that the people who suffer from it are lazy, upper-class hypochondriacs.  Randi hates the term “yuppie flu,” and I don’t blame her.  Randi is anything but lazy.  She’s bright and ambitious.  And despite what the name of the ill­ness might suggest, fatigue isn’t the only symptom of CFIDS.  Randi also experiences severe headaches, insomnia, poor concentration, shortness of breath, diffi­culty in digesting food, sore throats, sinus problems, and muscle and joint pain and weakness—all attributed to the same illness.  At times Randi is so weak from fatigue and so sore from mus­cle aches that she uses my old cane to walk.
      There are days when all Randi can do is move into the living room, lie on the couch, and vegetate until it is time to go back to bed that night.  Often she does not even have the en­ergy to carry on a simple conversation, and we have sometimes gone through entire days without saying much more than a simple “How are you?” or “I love you!” to each other.  On other days, she feels well enough to go out for a short time, only to come home afterward and collapse, spending the rest of the day either in bed or on the couch.
      For the first few years, Randi and I assumed that her illness would be temporary.  Eventually, we hoped, Randi would get well, and she would be able to graduate from Rosemead’s program and resume her plans to become a psychologist.  She was motivated, and very talented, and at the time, she had no intention of giving up her academic and professional dreams.
      For over a year, Randi struggled to keep her job as the technical editor for Rosemead’s Journal of Psychology and Theology while also maintaining her status as a full-time student.  As soon as we were able to afford it, she quit her job and eventually cut her course load to part-time—taking only two classes per semester.  Looking back, I don’t see how she kept going.  It’s one thing to be tired.  It’s another thing en­tirely to live in a constant state of exhaustion while pushing your­self to work and attend school.  Yet that’s exactly what Randi did.  She kept trying—hoping that by trimming enough off of her schedule, she could somehow continue.
      When we moved to California in 1988, our plans had been for Randi to finish her doctoral program in five years and work full-time for at least a year or two after that; then we wanted to start a family.  Because of CFIDS, none of that has happened.  After years of missing classes and turning in late assignments, Randi and I finally realized that she would never be able to complete all of her graduation requirements—especially the more demanding ones, such as the internship and the doctoral thesis.  Even more importantly, we also realized that she would never have any hope of physical recovery if she kept pushing her body beyond its limits.
      Ever since high school, Randi had dreamed of becoming a licensed psychologist.  Her last attempt to hold onto that dream was the year’s leave of absence that she took from school, hoping that the added rest would quicken her recovery time.  But when she was still ill at the end of that year, Randi finally came to terms with what had become inevitable; she quit her graduate program and gave up her career plans.
      If someone had told me just how difficult coping with this ill­ness would be, I probably wouldn’t have believed them.  I would have just blown them off, thinking that Randi and I were capable of handling anything.  Although we are coping, the truth is that CFIDS has made life harder for us than we could ever have imagined.
      One of the hardest things about Randi’s illness is the isolation it causes.  When she is at her worst, Randi some­times goes for a week or more without seeing anyone except me.  A couple of friends have stayed in contact with us and have made efforts to be helpful.  Other friends, either because they do not understand the nature of Randi’s illness or because they are simply too busy do­ing other things, have fallen by the wayside.  One guy suggested that I simply tell Randi to snap out of it and get her act together.  If only it were that easy.  Another person told me that she doesn’t believe she could stay married to someone who is chronically ill.  Just the kind of encouragement that you want to hear when your mate has been ill for years.
      Other friends have given us all sorts of advice, each proposing a different cure or solution to our problems.  Although we appreciate their good intentions, we need friends who are willing to share the burden of Randi’s illness with us, not advice on how to make her well.  People from our church have helped with some of the practical tasks that we have trouble with, such as doing housework or running an occasional errand.  One friend regularly takes Randi to get her hair cut; others check on her when I’m out of town.  Three teenage girls invited themselves over one night last December; they brought us an artificial Christmas tree, put it up, and then decorated it.  One time when Randi and I were both laid up with the flu, friends brought us groceries, cleaned up our kitchen, and even made us lunch.
      As supportive as many people have been, however, we still struggle with loneliness.  Randi’s CFIDS makes if tough for us to get close to people.  Most couples our age have parenthood in common, yet Randi and I have not been able to have children due to her illness.  Working couples can usually socialize in the evening, whereas Randi is most alert in the afternoon.  Randi’s symptoms are very unpredictable, so we often have to cancel social plans—but rescheduling with busy couples often means that we may not be able to make plans again for a month.
      In a lot of ways, it would be easier if we knew whether or not Randi will recover from this illness.  Unfortunately, there is no consistent prognosis for CFIDS.  We’ve met people who have recovered from CFIDS, and it’s encouraging to see them working, raising families, and getting along just fine.  Some people, though, remain ill indefinitely, with little or no improvement.  As of this writing, Randi has been sick for over five-and-a-half years.
      I wish there were some way that I could close this chapter on a more upbeat note.  I can’t.  I simply don’t know what the future has in store for us.  I know that I love Randi, that she loves me, and that our commitment to each other is just as strong today as it was on the day we married.  I know that God is a gracious God who has promised to go through life with us.  He has not left us alone with this illness.  Where we hurt, where we struggle, that’s where God continues to meet us.  Besides those two things, there isn’t much else to know.  There are no guarantees in life.  That’s part of what it means to walk by faith.  Nevertheless, at times walking by faith isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.