Twenty years ago this weekend my world changed. I awoke early on the morning of Dec. 12, 1984, with an unusual weakness in my legs. Within an hour that weakness had begun to ascend rapidly. I phoned our family physician, was examined at our regional hospital and immediately referred to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.

My wife drove without delay, but by the time we arrived I was unable to walk or even stand. Within 24 hours, my toes, legs, arms and fingers were totally paralyzed. Then my neck and facial muscles stopped working. I couldn’t move my lips, swallow or even breathe.

A mechanical respirator began to breathe for me, nonstop, day and night, for the next five months. I spent that Christmas in intensive care. EMMC became my home until August 1985.

Guillain-Barre syndrome, or GBS, is one of a number of immunological disorders. Every year it afflicts one or two of every 100,000 Americans. The good news is that a high percentage of GBS victims experience an almost complete recovery.

However, in some cases, the myelin sheath covering the peripheral motor nerve system is irreversibly damaged. Such was true in my case. Within days of my hospitalization, I asked a number of church elders and leaders to come to the hospital and pray for me. They did so immediately, surrounding my bed and asking God to reverse the course of the illness. But there was no apparent change.

Time became an enemy. Often, all alone late at night, trapped inside my own body, I would watch the second hand on the clock make its tortuously slow cycle, round and round, over and over. Desperation would periodically envelop me as I lay there for seemingly endless hours. It was a very dark time. And God seemed far, far away.

C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Where is God? Go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

What should we make of a God who sometimes seems silent, and who does not always answer our prayers as we like, or deliver us from life’s pain and brokenness?

Some claim that such problems result from our own lack of faith. Wiser men offer another explanation. The Old Testament sufferer Job said, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In other words, in this sin-fallen world, trouble is inevitable. None of us should expect to be exempt from it.

Jesus corroborated this in John 16:33. “In this world ye shall have tribulation,” he said. Thankfully, he also added a note of hope for those who know him personally: “… but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Someday in heaven God will wipe away every tear. Meanwhile, in this life, he promises a grace sufficient for every challenge.

The Apostle Paul once asked God to remove an affliction in his life. God wouldn’t do it. Instead, God told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

The grace of God comes our way in varied forms.

Twenty years ago God’s grace came to me by way of the staff at EMMC. Drs. Bach, Smith, Mossman, Wright, Jozefowicz. Nurses Ray, Carol, Debbie, Pam, Karen, Judy. Physical therapists, respiratory therapists, and even a housekeeper named Marian Fletcher. They, and many others, all came alongside me in my ordeal.

So did my church family. So did my neighbors and friends – from across America. My parents moved to Maine for 10 months. They traveled more than 100 miles daily to visit me in the hospital. My three sons were a great moral support.

Certainly my wife, Mary, has always been the most significant manifestation of God’s grace in my life. For more than 31 years, 20 of which I’ve now been in a wheelchair, she has been steady, faithful and supportive.

God’s grace also comes to us in the knowledge that he does not stand off from us in our suffering, but has entered into it, actually taking it upon himself in Christ, (Isaiah 53:4-5, Hebrews 2:18). Perhaps, therefore, in the end, God is not so silent as we sometimes think he is. When the roar of adversity is deafening, we may just have to listen for the evidences of his presence and grace in less obvious ways.

The Rev. Daryl E. Witmer is founder and director of the AIIA Institute, a national apologetics ministry, and associate pastor of the Monson Community Church. He may be reached at AIIAInstitute@aol.com or through ChristianAnswers.Net/AIIA. Voices is a weekly commentary by five Maine columnists who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life.