Mounting With Wings

Guest blog author, Kevin Powell

She was so open and expressive I was intrigued! I invited her to the Valentine’s banquet as our first date. It went well as we collected all the data of family and history to use as a foundation for the friendship we were building.

We could talk about anything and everything and did! It didn’t take long for Shelly to get tangled up tight in my heart strings! Three and a half trips around the sun later, I stood at the altar saying “I SURE do” to the girl I didn’t want to do life without. I still don’t!

The Team Dynamic
We invested heavily in our marriage—couple retreats, dates, and marriage and family seminars—and God blessed us with a happy and healthy marriage. Looking back one of the secrets was Shelly’s attitude. She always insisted we had a great marriage, and so we did. Whenever I got heated or disagreed with her, she would simply say: “Just remember, dear, we are on the same team. It’ll all work out!”

For years, she expressed that teamwork through service. She went from worrying she couldn’t compete with my mother’s cooking to becoming a master hostess, filling our home with mouthwatering meals and friendship to our many guests.

The Shift
But for the last three and a half years, Shelly hasn’t cooked a dish. She hasn’t made the bed, done the laundry, vacuumed the house, or picked up a single piece of clutter.

It isn’t because she refused or doesn’t want to. It’s because she physically can’t.

Since her ALS worsened, the physical acts of service she loved to do so much slowly vanished. Shortly after Shelly got her powered wheelchair we went on a date to a nearby paved track to ‘walk’ and talk. As we rolled along listening to a Christian podcast on marriage their guest mentioned how all marriages face crisis sooner or later. He went on to highlight a man with MS saying something profound:
⁠“I probably have 20% of the physical capability that I had before… but I’m determined to do 100% of the 20% I’m capable of doing.”

What a positive and healthy mindset for our ALS journey! It shifts our focus from our disabilities to our possibilities! Shelly chooses to give 100% of her 20%.

What 100% Looks Like

Here’s an example of some of the many things Shelly does with her 20%. Using only her eye-gaze computer, Shelly:
•⁠ ⁠Shops for our family on Amazon and coordinates Walmart pickups.
•⁠ ⁠Texts and encourages family and friends daily.
•⁠ ⁠Fundraises for worthy causes outside of our home.
•⁠ ⁠Directs the dinner table from her wheelchair (noticing who needs seconds!).
•⁠ ⁠Arranges nursing care to free up time for Bethany and me.
•⁠ ⁠Arranges meals at our home or sometimes to be delivered to someone who is sick or bereaved.
•⁠ ⁠Singlehandedly organized food for the rehearsal dinner and another large group meal for over 100 people for Nathan’s wedding weekend.
•⁠ ⁠Recently made a goal to post a new blog every 2 weeks.

She is eagerly and wholeheartedly doing everything she is able to do!

Enough
In 2 Corinthians 8:12, God reminds us that He graciously accepts what is given with a whole heart, looking at what we possess rather than what we lack. As the verse says, “if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have.”

Few of us will have to face ALS, but all of us face limitations—whether physical, relational, or something else entirely. We all have things we can no longer do, or wish we could do better. But Shelly’s example challenges me every day: Am I giving 100% of what I DO have?

Shelly proves that a willing mind is more powerful than a broken body.

She is still my partner, my helper, and my BFF and “My Favorite Person in the Whole Wide World” (as I often tell her).

Shelly’s been a keeper from the start,
And I love that girl with all my heart!

I am so glad we’re doing life together–every single percent!