Hope in the Struggle

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers and thank you for joining us here. This week, as a part of our Bible reading, we came across one of those tailor made Psalms that so perfectly reflect our and especially Joy’s experience since the accident. A psalm that expresses God’s gift of preserving Joy’s life and his provision of grace and mercy shown us in her recovery and daily journey. As soon as she read it, she said she hoped I would include it in this week’s blog. And so, as said so well in Psalm 116…

I love the LORD because he hears my voice

and my prayer for mercy.

Because he bends down to listen,

I will pray as long as I have breath!

Death wrapped its ropes around me;

the terrors of the grave overtook me.

I saw only trouble and sorrow.

Then I called on the name of the LORD:

“Please, LORD, save me!”

How kind the LORD is! How good he is!

So merciful, this God of ours!

The LORD protects those of childlike faith;

I was facing death, and he saved me.

Let my soul be at rest again,

for the LORD has been good to me.

He has saved me from death,

my eyes from tears,

my feet from stumbling…

What can I offer the LORD

for all he has done for me?

I will lift up the cup of salvation

and praise the LORD’s name for saving me!

While this psalm was one of the week’s many blessings, it was a week not without its stressors and struggles for Joy. The persistent challenges of her aphasia create stress and anxiety, certainly in social settings where she is meeting new people, but even in interactions with long-time beloved friends. I am not sure how much those around Joy even notice it, I think she does a wonderful job, but when every word has to be searched for and questioned as to its appropriateness, simple conversation is anything but simple.

While Joy expressed that she felt very blessed with the friend and social interactions she had this week, she also acknowledged she was exhausted from those interactions and needed some solitary days to recharge and regroup.

A while back I quoted from Joan Chittister’s book, “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope,” and this past week drew me back to some more of the wisdom she shares when she writes:

The Roman philosopher Seneca said of struggle, “Failure changes for the better, success for the worse.” Success can soften us but there is in struggle a challenge to those parts of us that cannot come fully to life except in the darkness of adversity. Courage, character, self-reliance, and faith are all forged to a fine point in the fire of affliction.

We wish that it were otherwise. We rail and fuss because it’s not. But the fact is that there are simply some parts of the human character that are honed best, and maybe only, under tension. Nothing else demands so much of us. Nothing else unmasks us to ourselves to the same degree. Nothing else exorcises the self-centeredness in us to the same degree. It teaches us our place in the universe. It teaches us how little we really need in life to be happy. It teaches us that every day life starts over again…

Out of all these things comes new strength and a new sense of self, new compassion and a new sense of the purpose of life. It is struggle that is the foundation of hope, not hope that is a hedge against struggle…

Hope is greater than faith because hope not only believes in the presence of the God of Eternity. Hope believes, as well, in the God of Time who companions us now and waits for us in a beneficent future as we discover in struggle all the layers of life within us that go basically unseasoned in times of plenty but wax in times of lean. Struggle is, in other words, the gift of new life in disguise. A hard gift, perhaps. A strong gift, indeed. But a gift without which we run the risk of going to our graves only half alive.

Those last lines, “Struggle is, in other words, the gift of new life in disguise. A hard gift, perhaps. A strong gift, indeed. But a gift without which we run the risk of going to our graves only half alive,” sums up so well for us our new normal life and the gift we hold that it can be to us. We also hope that this thought can encourage you in the days ahead when facing whatever struggles come your way…