Prayers of Compassionate Joy

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers and thank you for taking time out of your busy summer schedule to check in with us. This week was a very “normal” week in our “new normal” life, which was very good! One of the good things that really stood out to me, often stands out to me, and did especially this week, was Joy’s many compassionate prayers for me, for our life together, for our family, friends, and the world at large.

In so many ways the accident has taken aspects of Joy’s life, which were always there, and amplified them. Whether it is Joy’s loving nature, kindness, compassion, generosity, gracious service, and/or passionate prayer, each attribute is more visible and more accessible to those of us around her. And this week, it was Joy’s prayerful compassion that stood out and blessed me in very special ways.

From Joy’s earliest sense of consciousness after the accident, even though much of her understanding of language had been wiped from her memory, she had an awareness of God’s presence and a heart to communicate with Him in any way she could. In fact, here’s how she described it in her own words:

I realized immediately that my words didn’t work for me. I couldn’t answer basic questions about myself and could not name any of my family or my friends...

Gary read to me the writing he was doing to share with all of you asking for prayers for me to get better. As he shared with me about the wonderful people that were praying for me, I started praying for them as well. I believe God listens to people from all languages in the world and I believe God understands all the different languages. I knew I couldn’t pray in normal words yet, but I believed God heard my prayers even if I couldn’t know the words I needed to say. I was so thankful for everyone’s prayers and so I prayed for many people and for my family and friends, those who were praying for me, for the hospital staff, and for others. As different people would come into my mind, I would pray for them and I believe God heard me even before I could use words again.

Now, with her increased vocabulary, Joy is even more driven and faithful in her heartfelt compassionate conversations with her Father-God. In witnessing Joy’s uninhibited display of compassion and determination to be used by God wherever he may lead, I appreciate all the more Henri Nouwen’s take on the subject when he writes:

“Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it… Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human…”

Fortunately, despite the challenges of extending compassion to others, our God does not leave us without an example as Nouwen further shares:

“The truly good news is that God is not a distant God, a God to be feared and avoided, a God of revenge, but a God who is moved by our pains and participates in the fullness of the human struggle... God is a compassionate God. This means, first of all, that God is a God who has chosen to be God-with-us... As soon as we call God, “God-with-us,” we enter into a new relationship of intimacy with him. By calling God Emmanuel, we recognize God’s commitment to live in solidarity with us, to share our joys and pains, to defend and protect us, and to suffer all of life with us. The God-with-us is a close God, a God whom we call our refuge, our stronghold, our wisdom, and even, more intimately, our helper, our shepherd, our love. We will never really know God as a compassionate God if we do not understand with our heart and mind that “the Word became flesh and lived among us…”

And then, just one more thought, although not speaking specifically of compassion, it is certainly Joy’s post-accident reality, when Nouwen writes:

“The great secret of the spiritual life, the life of the Beloved Sons and Daughters of God, is that everything we live, be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of the journey toward the full realization of our humanity. It is not hard to say to one another: “All that is good and beautiful leads us to the glory of the children of God.” But it is very hard to say: “But didn’t you know that we all have to suffer and thus enter into our glory?” Nonetheless, real care means the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into a gateway to joy.”

While those final words are not easy, we pray that they can help motivate all of us to compassionate prayer and support for one another and a, "willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into a gateway to joy."