The Door of No Return

I remembered the flight to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I'll remember the room. It was too quiet—the kind of silence that makes your heartbeat sound like a hammer against your ribs. I had walked in with questions about "annoying" symptoms: muscle weakness, a strange twitching in my calves, lingering fatigue. I expected antibiotics, perhaps some physical therapy. I did not expect a death sentence. The doctor took a breath before he spoke. That was the first sign. Then the words came—slow, clinical, detached:

“Mr. Greenfield, you have ALS - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.”

"Doc," I stammered, "are you saying I have Lou Gehrig’s disease?"

"I only have two to five years to live?"

In a single conversation, time stopped. And then, it began to crawl.

Before the word "ALS" was ever spoken, I lived in what I call the Liminal Wait. For almost two years, I was trapped in the unknown. I waited for the results of EMGs; I waited for the twitching to make sense; I waited for a doctor to tell me you have a pinched nerve, or a curable myopathy, polymyositis, or Guillain-Barre syndrome. Yes, I did my research!  Heck, I wanted the name of the enemy, yet I was terrified of it. I sat in waiting rooms flipping through old magazines, praying for a "treatment" and fearing a "sentence."

But once the diagnosis landed, the waiting didn't end. It just changed shape. I entered what I call the Installment Plan of Grief. ALS doesn’t take everything at once; it makes you wait for the next drop. I found myself in the agony of waiting for my own body to betray me. I would wake up and stare at my hands, waiting to see if this was the day I could no longer button my shirt. I would look at the stairs, waiting for the moment my legs would finally refuse the climb. It is a psychological torture to grieve a loss that hasn't fully happened yet, but is scheduled to arrive.

Then came the institutional wait. I learned the bitterness of a healthcare system that moves at a glacial pace while my motor neurons died at light speed. I waited for almost a year for insurance to approve a power wheelchair while my world shrank to the size of a single room. I waited for equipment that promised "independence" but arrived in boxes I no longer had the strength to open.

The hardest wait wasn’t for a chair, a rollator, or even a cure; it was the Gethsemane Wait—the agonizing vigil for a decision. In the biblical Garden, Jesus asked His friends to "stay awake" while He wrestled with His fate. Sitting in the silence, as "My Boo", my best friend watches over me in the ICU, I found myself in my own Garden.  I had to stay awake to the battle between my body and my spirit. To trache or not to trache? To tether myself to a machine to remain with my family and friends, or to just let go?

Gethsemane is the garden of your own life where the sweat feels like drops of blood. It is the place where you dig to the bottom of your soul to find the clarity to say, "Not my will, but yours be done." Choosing between living and dying wasn’t just a medical choice; it was the ultimate labor of my faith—deciding how to hold the cup I had been given.

I felt like Job when he cried:

“The arrows of the Almighty are in me... God’s terrors are marshaled against me.” — Job 6:4

The enemy whispered in the "waiting".  He used the delays to plant seeds of despair: You’re finished. You’re useless. Why wait for the end? Just give up. While ALS was not only attacking my body, depression was attacking my soul, and fear was attacking my spirit.

My Body is saying "hey soul follow my path, come to me, listen to your thoughts, your emotions, your desires and temptations, and live according to the natural laws of humanity.

My Spirit is saying "hey soul follow my path, come talk to me, have a personal relationship with me, submit your mind, body, and soul, and honor me through prayer and scripture.

Scripture says, “May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

My body was weakening, but the real warfare was in the spirit. One night, when the depression felt suffocating, I remembered the commandment:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart... and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).

I argued with God in the dark. “Lord, what strength? You took it! I’m waiting on a nurse just to turn me over so I don't get a pressure sore. I have nothing left.”. But as I internalized the Word, a realization broke through the darkness: ALS could make me wait for a wheelchair, but it couldn't make me wait to worship. It could paralyze my legs, but it couldn't paralyze my spirit.

There is a difference between waiting for death and waiting on the Lord. Job sat in the ashes, scraping his sores, waiting. But he wasn't just waiting for the pain to stop; he was waiting for his Redeemer.

He declared, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15).

ALS took my physical independence and replaced it with a Holy Dependence. It stripped away the pride of "asking for help" and revealed the "Son of God." I am no longer waiting for a cure to be happy. I am no longer waiting for a better healthcare system to be at peace.

Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25).

He said that while he was still covered in sores. He said that while he was still waiting.  The doctor said ALS would end my life. What he didn’t know is that the "waiting" would awaken my faith. My body is failing, installment by installment. I am still waiting for the next challenge, the next breath, the next alarm beeping from a machine.  But my spirit? It has stopped waiting. It has already arrived at the feet of Jesus.

Maybe you are in a waiting room today. Waiting for a diagnosis, a scan, a breakthrough, or for the pain to finally subside. The enemy attacks the soul during the wait to make you think God has forgotten the room you’re sitting in. But the same God who sustained Job in the ashes and me confined to this wheelchair is in the room with you. Entering that “Door of No Return”  and finally receiving a diagnosis might feel like a sentence, but the wait is where you discover your strength. When you love God in the midst of the "Not Yet," you become unbreakable.  I know my Redeemer lives. And I’m not just waiting for the end—I’m waiting for the Glory.