Life is a challenge

The challenges are rarely enjoyable and often life threatening, and/or associated with injury and lifelong crippling. Sooner or later, usually as a child, one meets the challenge of believing in a being far superior to man, the child is expected to accept an unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence. I am a Christian and such a setting is typical.

However, throughout my life the experiences I faced always led to some degree of doubt that lay in the back of my mind all of my life. Then, my wife developed cancer in 2001 and given five years to live. She accepted it as she had all of the challenges we had faced in our marriage, quietly and rather serenely. I began to examine my own life and came to the conclusion: yes, I believe that there is a God, and that Jesus Christ, his son, is my savior and my healer, but that the proof of that belief is not necessarily based on faith alone. He is around me at all times and on all occasions. It is based on the experience of the numerous exigencies, or urgent conditions that pressed upon my entire family and the individuals alone.

I have almost entirely based it on my numerous illnesses and accidents because I cannot honestly speak for my living relatives who are moving forward with their own lives as mine approaches its end. There were many discussions with my wife who helped me document my health difficulties in a rational sequence even as her cancer progressed. There was the oldest of my sisters with whom I was very close, and as children we never had secrets from one another. As adults I would visit her on numerous occasions in Delta, CO. We always enjoyed taking a stroll in the Park with its nature walks adjacent to the rivers that give Delta its name. We spoke openly and honestly about our families. Her wisdom, like that of Elaine, my wife, was calm and quiet. As a husband and brother, I did not acknowledge its value until too late.

First there was my parents' divorce when I was but a child. It led directly to a fragmented family that had to desperately struggle to stay together. Then there was my mother's unrelenting struggle to keep us children together. She had neither experience nor an education. Her father had deserted her and her brother soon after their mother's death. When he was finally discovered, he was well off and quickly told them to get lost. Thus it went on. The story tells the rest.

Richard W. Leech