Power of the Powerless
His large family lived in a farm house with Oliver’s room on the third floor. One day Christopher brought a girl home for family dinner. When the meal was complete, he invited her upstairs to meet Oliver. Politely she declined. Some time later he brought another girl home for dinner and asked the same question. “Yes!” she said enthusiastically. Together they climbed the steps to the third floor with a bowl of pureed food. Chris sat down on the bed and proceeded to slowly spoon the food into Oliver’s mouth. While mid-spoon, Christopher felt a tap on his shoulder and heard a voice asking, “May I do that?” Girl number two climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged to tenderly finish the messy process. Christopher closed that chapter with a question: “Which girl would you have married?”
The Power of the Powerless…to reveal character….to mold character…to teach patience and servanthood. It can’t be measured or quantified, but you know it when you see it.
My own character and faith was forged in those twenty years of quiet solitude in my home, dealing daily with care, sleepless nights, and countless medical decisions. It was God and God alone who sustained me.
Friends and neighbors watched and observed Sasha’s life, and ours too for that matter. They saw brokenness and heartache and weakness, set to the backdrop of God’s sustaining love and the power of His Holy Spirit to persevere. Those who took the time and had eyes to really see Sasha, were moved themselves to entertain thoughts and ponder eternity in ways they likely never had. Jeremy’s little buddies wheeled her chair into the family room so she could sit with them as they played. She couldn’t say a word, but somehow they felt her presence.
My seemingly hard neighbor, raised in the City of Chicago in an orphanage, loved my Sasha. She got her off the bus for me countless times in the afternoon, and daily observed my loneliness and depression and countless tears. I was concerned that my life was a terrible example to her of the power of God. I felt defeated in my desire to bring her to a personal relationship with Jesus. Who would want that based on what she saw in me?
One of the greatest gifts of my life was when, after twenty years of sharing a driveway, she volunteered that as she had watched me all those years, what she had seen was genuine faith. When years later she was dying of cancer, I was home from D.C., and had the privilege of spending time with and praying and loving on her in her final hours on this earth.
Jeremy got his PhD at St. Andrews in Scotland in 2022. He and Liesel have now given us Cates, Asa and Lucy to join our first born grandchild, Moses. When Cates, our first granddaughter was born, she had the same long, slender fingers Sasha had inherited from my mother, her grandmother. Just as the baby Jeremy, in all of his healthy wholeness, was a healing balm to me, Cates brought another dimension of healing. A beautiful little girl in the likeness of Sasha…ladylike and sweet. The goodness of God made manifest in an unaware, beautiful baby girl.
The grown up big brother, Jeremy has written several books and is Senior Pastor at North Shore Alliance Church in North Vancouver, B.C. jeremyrios.com, https://www.nsac.bc.ca/. I never think for a minute that having Sasha as a sister hasn’t had a profound effect on his life.
My tough Patton’s-Third Army-veteran-dad was brought to his knees by sweet, helpless, little Sasha. Holding her on his lap for endless hours, he told me when she was a year old that he would spend every penny he had to get whatever medical care she needed. After visits to St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Mayo Clinic, time spent in a special program at UCLA, consultations with doctors at University of Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital, a neurologist in Beverly Hills, there was no fix for our broken girl.
My mother, already transformed by the power of Christ at 33, was my partner in it all. When my musical life blossomed, she and my dad would drop everything to drive 300 miles, move into my home and take on Sasha’s care. Once I did a three week solo-concert tour in Japan, leaving just a few days after Sasha had spinal surgery. My parents willingly, always embraced that care and responsibility in order to let me go. Up until my mom was in her mid-seventies, she was still the mom of my heart, comforting me, praying with me, lifting as much of the burden as she could.
The Power of the Powerless….revealing character….forging character ….and bringing us helpless into the presence of God….that was what Sasha did for all of us.
“My strength is made perfect in weakness,” said the Apostle Paul, and through the two thousand years that separate us from him, we learned in our own millenia that it is true!