My Lenten Reflection: Living in Grace Despite an Incurable Disease

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“Keep on keeping on” is a mantra of sorts that we usually tell people who are facing trials or challenges. But what happens when a particular trial or challenge seems never-ending? How do you face each day, knowing that it will be full of hardship and obstacles?

Such is the life of people like Rosanne Romero, a wife and mother who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis over 28 years ago.

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a degenerative, debilitating neurological disease with no known cure. Rosanne writes about her life with MS and other topics in Kerygma, an inspirational magazine, and has also authored two books titled Amusing Grace and Amusing Grace: A Second Helping. Here, she shares part of her story with us.

The diagnosis
Rosanne still remembers clearly how she was diagnosed with MS.

“I started to see double. I had pins and needles running down the left side of my body,” she shares. “I would black out for a few seconds, like two or three seconds, then the lights would be back again. That's what prompted me to see an orthopedist -- I thought I had a pinched nerve.”

When the doctors told Rosanne that what she had was much worse than a pinched nerve, she was shocked, to say the least.

“I was trying to wrap my brain around being seriously ill,” she recalls. “When the doctor said ‘degenerative and disabling,’  I was angry. But I didn't know who at. I was just upset.  

“I didn't tell anyone immediately because I was still trying to grasp it. My girls were still very young then. I had a brother who thought I was making it all up so I kept most of the anger and disappointment to myself.”  

Thankfully, Rosanne’s husband, Omy, was “a firm support from the start, although the disease is not easy to understand.”

"My first thought was ‘Disable me? This sickness is going to disable me? Nah… not if I can help it.’

“There were the numerous ‘pray-overs’, and whenever I would be asked if I felt something change and I said ‘no,’ (which was the truth), the people who did the pray-overs were aghast that their gift of healing didn't work in me. So they would say maybe there's sin in my family tree… but there's sin in every family tree, so why am I the one who gets a dreaded disease?”

I didn't blame anyone, though. I was just too upset at the diagnosis. At that time, I already had a personal relationship with God. So I poured everything out to Him.”

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Acceptance and seeking God’s daily grace
Pouring her heart out to God helped Rosanne accept her diagnosis, and her daily struggles with MS. “When I finally reached a place where I accepted MS, I asked God for just two things – ‘Please do not let me stop hearing from You,’ and ‘Grant me the special grace to keep my eyes on You.’”

The list of physical difficulties of people with MS is quite long, and though symptoms may vary from person to person, Rosanne was not spared from many of them.

“I have a bladder that's been deteriorated by MS since the year I got diagnosed. I have vision problems. I have pins and needles all day and all night,” she enumerates.

“I have pain behind my eyeballs. Pain inside my ear, and head pain -- not excruciating, but exhausting because I get it on and off. Shooting pain. I hear shrill microphone feedback sounds all the time… on and off, on and off. I have trouble with coordination. And there are many others.”

Despite all her difficulties, MS did not stop Rosanne from being a good wife and mother. “I took my girls to school every single day, and waited till school was over,” she shares. People said, ‘You don't have to do that with your. condition’ But I was doing it because I got a sense from the Lord early on: ‘Do what you can, WHILE you can.’”  

Because of that, Rosanne strives to make every day count, especially with her family. “I do my best to be a good homemaker, even if MS makes that really difficult. I try not to excuse myself from the usual stuff. I never missed a parent-teacher meeting in school; I went to all the programs; I sewed all their costumes -- the works.”

Clinging to God
Living with MS is certainly not easy, and there are truly extremely difficult days. Through it all, Rosanne says her relationship with God is what's helped her the most.

“Not that my faith never wavered nor that I'm holding on to Him so well,” she confesses. I do get angry. I never say, ‘Lord, I know You will heal me now because that is my faith.’ I never have those moments. What I have is, ‘Lord, I will just wait on You.’"

“Just this week I had two bad falls,” Rosanne recounts during our interview with her. “The first one, I fell in the bathroom and slammed my left hip on the floor. Yesterday, I fell as I was walking to the car in the parking lot. This time, my face hit the pavement full force, so I busted my lip.  

“I ran to my prayer journal and wrote, ‘Lord, I feel so bad; my MS seems to be on a steep decline. I need to hear from You, I'm so anxious. Please re-align me, Lord," she confesses.

Encouraged to encourage others
In spite of her struggles, Rosanne moves forward, knowing that God has a purpose for her. “I rarely bother people with what I'm going through with MS because the balance I keep is so fragile; I can't afford to give a negative remark to tip that equilibrium, especially when I'm in pain. Like I am now,” she shares.

Still, Rosanne is happy, knowing that her experiences can encourage and inspire others somehow. “Just recently, a girl from Cebu flew to Manila just to spend the day with me. She has just been diagnosed with MS,” she shares.

Every day is a struggle for Rosanne, but she perseveres, carrying her “crosses” with faith.“As Corrie Ten Boom, Christian author and Nazi concentration camp survivor, says, ‘There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.’ No matter how far bottom you are,  God can reach you. Life is about storms. Either you're in a storm or you're helping someone out of a storm.”