The Amazing Compassion of Joy

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers and thank you for joining us on this mid-summer holiday weekend. We have had very special times again this week with family and friends, but for me the most special, and for that matter sacred event, was watching Joy’s labor of love in publishing her latest blog post this past Tuesday, you can link to it here. A host emotions flood my mind as I reflect on her amazing grit and determination combined with the most lovely and compassionate spirit you can imagine.

For those of you who have read Joy's post, her compassion and love for others and her resolute and sweet faith in God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, shines in the midst of living this “new normal” Joy and I find ourselves in. A new normal that holds miraculous blessings while at the same time delivering its share of gut punching realities in living with traumatic brain injury. I wish you could all see what I see as Joy labors, lovingly and with laser focus, but labors nonetheless, over each and every word that goes into the thoughts she shares. What would have taken her minutes before the accident can now mean investing literally hours to get her thoughts out and recorded. It is lovely and painful to watch all at the same time. 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…”

But then reflecting on the hope we have in God's compassion he writes:

“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 to keep my Nouwen stream of thought going, and although not speaking specifically of compassion, but certainly to Joy's and my “new normal,” I am encouraged by the following as he shares:

“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.”

It is my hope and prayer, that through witnessing Joy’s commitment to compassion, love, and service to others, that all of us can be challenged anew, to model the spirit that Joy does on God’s behalf for us and all those around her.🙏🏻