This past week was…not great.
It was already slated to be a busy week during a very busy month. Then, in 72 hours, we went from a simple wellness visit to the emergency room to a training session at Milwaukee Children’s Hospital to learn how to check blood sugar and inject insulin into our kid.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled life to bring you this important message: your son has Type 1 Diabetes.
Just like that, speaking gigs were postponed, daily planners were whitewashed with white-out, and Ben’s life changed forever.
He’s handling it well with a great attitude. I’m so proud of him, and his sisters, who have stepped up to shower him with love and support. As parents, Kim and I have been living under a weighted blanket of fears and worries, sadness and overwhelm. Weirdly, we rotate between grief over having been dealt this hand, and guilt for feeling sad because we know how much worse it could be. Visiting a children’s hospital has a way of making that abundantly clear.
It’s early, but I feel called to share some thoughts publicly, to offer a live look as we ask the very question I’ve shared on hundreds of stages to thousands of people: “Now that this has happened, what does this make possible?”
It’s not an empty platitude. It’s a way of seeing that helps one find rainbows amidst life’s tumultuous thunderstorms. So we’ve been asking the question, and we’ve already found some answers…
This diagnosis has brought us even closer together as a family. Team Kotecki is stronger than ever.
As Ben rises to the challenge, I can already see him becoming more responsible and gaining confidence.
The necessity of counting carbs to know how much insulin to administer has the potential to make our entire family healthier as we become more aware of our choices.
That’s only the beginning. My faith compels me to think even bigger…
The nurse who trained us has Type 1 diabetes herself. I can’t help but wonder if this will impact Ben’s career someday, with the empathy he gains impacting hundreds or thousands of people.
Maybe this will put him on the road that will lead to him meeting his future wife someday.
Maybe he’ll have some part to play in helping to find a cure.
Of course, I don’t know if any versions of these rudimentary visions will come to pass. But I do know this: the good that will ultimately come from this diagnosis, the number of people it will impact, and the multitude of graces that will abound are no match for my meager imagination.
I can’t predict what it will look like, but I can plan on it being better than I can imagine.
And it’s not wishful thinking, either.
I have seen it in my own life.
When I look back, there are so many instances where the connected dots go back so far it’s hard to see them all. “If this hadn’t happened, then this wouldn’t have happened, and this would never have been possible.” On and on it goes, an endless tapestry of threads, expertly woven and interconnected with the lives of others. I can’t think of a single instance where I’d remove any horrible thing that I’ve gone through in my life, because then I’d have to sacrifice the abundance of good that came with it.
Of course, sometimes, not enough time has passed to see anything good, or any glimmer of hope. Asking the question, “What does this make possible?” helps prime us to see the silver linings when they eventually appear.
Like most people, I prefer comfort, and I spend a lot of time and effort chasing it. Suffering, however, is unavoidable. Sooner or later, the storm finds us. We eventually receive news we didn’t want to hear.
One benefit of being this close to fifty is that I have enough experience to know that time after time, failures, disappointments, tragedies, and traumas have yielded blessings beyond my wildest imagination.
God writes the best stories.
He does his best work when we surrender.
After we returned home from our first of three big training sessions at the hospital, I was feeling overwhelmed by all the things that instantly changed about our lives, and the new responsibilities and financial burdens added to our plate. As we finished dinner, a small rain shower passed by, and the largest, brightest rainbow I’ve ever seen appeared on the horizon over Lake Michigan.
We rushed out to behold its majesty, which brought forth our neighbors from their homes, too.
It was an emphatic reminder that everything was going to be ok and that the Master Storyteller was already at work. Not necessarily easy, but OK. That’s what gives me every confidence that this diagnosis will prove to be a gift that will help Ben become the best version of himself.
So yeah, the past week was not great.
But we will continue to ask, “What does this make possible?”
I know that the answer will be something good.
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