Mourning Losses, Living in Gratitude

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers. Welcome back, it is good to have you here. As Joy and I enter this month of the accident anniversary, we are each acutely aware of how we have been impacted by the dramatic losses and permanent changes that the accident brought to our lives. While at the same time, being overwhelmed with thankfulness and gratitude for the life we are now living.

I shared an article last week that told the story of traumatic brain injury survivors that were left with much more severe physical and cognitive outcomes than we’ve experienced. We thank God every day for the gift of Joy walking, talking, reading, doing her crafts, interacting with friends and family, working around our house, and much more. And yet, there are times as Joy courageously, but very laboriously, and still haltingly, does her daily read through the Bible, that she just stops and breaks down in tears realizing how different her brain is now than it was before the accident. While her experiential memory is largely intact, the limitations to her knowledge memory of language recognition, understanding, comprehension, and retention becomes overwhelming at times. We visited with our tax person Wednesday and while that went well, Joy will break down after an event like that or a medical visit, realizing that she comprehended very little of what went on and could not participate meaningfully in the conversation.

For me, while minuscule compared with the impact of Joy’s wounds, I have lived each day since the accident with a degree of chronic pain that will not resolve. It is by no means as severe as many people experience and in no way causes any limits to my “doing life,” but it is a constant reminder how different life is now than before the accident.

As a result, we choose to take time for tears of mourning the loss of sight, language, comprehension, knowledge, freedom from pain, and more, because we believe it is important to take the time to grieve. Not to live in that grief, but to grieve nonetheless. And having taken that time to grieve, we are even more free to celebrate the wonderful gift of life we have been given and enjoy together.

I’ve written before about where my mind would go early on after the accident. Would Joy live, would she be paralyzed for life, would she ever walk, talk, read and comprehend the words she was hearing and/or reading? But each time this past week that the memory of those early questions resurfaced for me, I was able to celebrate with a burst of thankfulness and gratitude for God’s grace and mercy because indeed, yes, Joy is walking, talking, reading, and comprehending far more than we ever hoped and expected. It was a very special synergy as we took the time to mourn and grieve, while also experiencing a wonderful sense of gratefulness in the blessings we enjoy now day after day. And then, to add to that joy, our Alyx blessed us with a wonderful act of kindness that overwhelmed us, leaving us speechless and with tears of thankfulness for their compassionate encouragement.

This experience reminded me of Brené Brown’s research and observations regarding the importance of gratitude and its relationship to joy. She writes:

“One of the most profound changes in my life happened when I got my head around the relationship between gratitude and joy. I always thought that joyful people were grateful people. I mean, why wouldn’t they be? They have all of that goodness to be grateful for. But after spending countless hours collecting stories about joy and gratitude, three powerful patterns emerged: Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who described themselves as joyful, actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice. Both joy and gratitude were described as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human interconnectedness and a power greater than us. People were quick to point out the differences between happiness and joy as the difference between a human emotion that’s connected to circumstances and a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.”

And building on that thought given our intertwined week of mourning and gratitude, I was blessed yesterday morning as I read Psalm 30:11-12 which says, “You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, that I might sing praises to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever!”

Of course one of the things we are most thankful, grateful, and joyful for is all of you who have been so faithful in your prayers, support, and encouragement to us. We are so very blessed by you, we pray for you, and we wish you all a blessed and safe week ahead.