I'll See You Tomorrow: Building Relational Resilience When You Want to QuitSample

Till Tomorrow, Tyler

My adolescence was plagued by my brother Tyler’s cancer. His treatments made him in so much pain, paralyzed, and bloated that he eventually decided he didn’t want to live anymore.

One day, I was helping him get dressed in the bathroom, and he burst into tears.

“Look at me!” he cried. “I’m so ugly. My face looks like a balloon. I just want to die.”

He had lost everything, yet Tyler went on to learn what it meant to live with what was possible. Without hope, he had nothing.

Maybe you feel the same way. I’ll let you in on a secret: sometimes, God gives us more than we can handle. Sometimes the ideal gets obliterated. And so we look to do what is possible.

Self-reliance is a myth. There have been so many moments and experiences my body couldn’t handle. I needed my mother. I needed my brother. I needed my friends. There are times in my life when I should have reached out for support, but my instincts, as an introvert and untrusting of others, kept me suffering in silence.

Solitude isn’t bad; we all need moments of solitude to process and recenter ourselves spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. But moments of solitude are much different from living a life of solitude. Don’t confuse solitude with isolation. I used to use the two words synonymously. I would say, “I like my alone time,” but really, I was just lonely. We need support. We need hope. We need prayer. We need people.

This world will never give you what’s ideal, but it also can’t kill what’s possible. I now have no doubt in my mind that heaven is a real place. Tyler was paralyzed and dying when he decided to dedicate his life to what was possible. We were baptized together a few months before he died. It was quite moving—his eighteen-year-old body being carried into the baptismal tank. And I’ve carried his faith with me ever since. His commitment created my possibility. Scripture doesn’t say that with God, all things are ideal. It says that with God, all things are still possible.

Pray

God, I invite you into the painful situations in my life and the ones that are not ideal. Thank you for being the God of the possible and bringing me out of isolation and into the family.