Good Week, Some Challenging Days

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers. As the title said, its been a good week with some challenging days, more noticeable this week than the usual ups and downs of our new normal. While we kept up our routine activities and Joy enjoyed her monthly knitting group at Bundles of Love, had a lovely walk and lunch with dear long-term work friends, and had made some recognizable gains in her aphasia therapy, a new annoying health issue and what felt like more frequent emotional exhaustion over her deficits lead to several tearful times of melancholy for both of us.

For Joy this exhibits with sudden overwhelming fatigue, the aforementioned melancholy, and a heightened struggle with her aphasia, sometimes completely unable to speak a single word. For me it is more of a gut punch sensation, an immense sense of lose and a searing ache over the wounds Joy suffered, often accompanied by flashbacks of her broken body laying on the street or in the hospital bed. I am very thankful that we are in our retirement so that we can take the time necessary to process each of these episodes together without much pressure from external schedules or specific demands.

I am also so very thankful that we both experience these times in a context of a “God with us” as opposed to one or both of us feeling a “God against us.” In our respective experiences, we both process the pain and loss felt in what I would describe as a partnership with God’s presence and despite the pain, that presence being sensed as a palpable comfort. Not a comfort as in “comfortable” but a comfort as in the assurance of God’s presence and sufficient provision for us now and in eternity. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be if we weren’t able to have this shared experience even though originating in different ways for each of us. While we had a strong and commonly understood shared faith before the accident, we have seen others with similar held beliefs and experiences have that faith utterly shattered in times of traumatic and permanent loss such as we experienced.

But as I have written about previously, without a doubt, God “prepared” me in a very unique way before the accident by drawing me into a deep study of God’s sufficiency in any and all circumstances of life. For Joy, as she shared in her latest post, it was God’s voice calling her to come out of a hole, seen by her as a path of death, and to live and fulfill the purposes he had for her. No matter what her deficits from the accident, a clear and undeniable theme for Joy is the clarity of God’s voice to her and his assurance of a purpose for her life.

I struggle to find words to express the assurance that lies in knowing God is actively engaged in your life, even when that life isn’t pleasant at the moment. I see a similar theme in verses we read this week in our reading through the Bible. A portion of the New Testament verses were Acts 27:22-25 which finds Paul at sea in the midst of a violent storm speaking to his captors and fellow travelers when he says, “But take courage! None of you will lose your lives, even though the ship will go down. For last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me, and he said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul, for you will surely stand trial before Caesar! What’s more, God in his goodness has granted safety to everyone sailing with you.’ So take courage! For I believe God. It will be just as he said.”

I think it is normal, because of the impending danger of the storm, to easily read the assurance of deliverance from the crisis and miss the overall context. If you consider the overall context, the assurance Paul receives is, “Don’t be afraid, Paul, you’ll be saved from this storm so you can go to Rome, be my witness before Caesar at your trial, and then be beheaded by Nero toward the end of his ruthless reign. So take courage.” Kind of mind bending isn’t it? But given our experience, I am thankful that the Bible isn’t all sunshine and roses and that conundrums like this are there for us to wrestle with. What our collective experience has proven to us, is that circumstances aren’t the measure of our security, purpose, success, or lovability, it is God’s felt hand on us in faithful assurance of purpose that holds us tight and carries us through the “valley of the shadow of death.”

So I would sum up our week with the words of Jeremiah the prophet in Lamentations 3:17-26

as we declare:

Peace has been stripped away,

and I have forgotten what prosperity is.

I cry out, “My splendor is gone!

Everything I had hoped for from the LORD is lost!”

The thought of my suffering and homelessness

is bitter beyond words.

I will never forget this awful time,

as I grieve over my loss.

Yet I still dare to hope

when I remember this:

The faithful love of the LORD never ends!

His mercies never cease.

Great is his faithfulness;

his mercies begin afresh each morning.

I say to myself, “The LORD is my inheritance;

therefore, I will hope in him!”

The LORD is good to those who depend on him,

to those who search for him.

So it is good to wait quietly

for salvation from the LORD.

We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for your interest, prayers, and support. Your loving encouragement is felt and appreciated more than words can say. Please be assured of our prayers for you all.🙏🏻