The Deep Soul of Joy

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers welcome back and thank you for your presence here. Last week I wrote about how a year before, we had discovered that Joy had lost all sense of shapes, they literally had no meaning to her. So we worked hard on our homework, she gained an awareness of and relearned what the different shapes were and I proudly reported that, “shapes are now recognized.”

Well, after I posted last Friday morning, that afternoon, we dutifully took out our Tactus Aphasia app for some homework and the first exercise selecting from a possible six objects was, “Touch the blue circle after you touch the yellow flower and the red bird.” Joy frequently needs to have the verbal command repeated a time or two for understanding, but this time she hit repeat, after repeat, after repeat… The blue circle was tripping her up, she’d say circle, circle, circle… But while, in general, shapes are recognized, for one reason or another, the circle had again fallen into obscurity for her, at least last Friday afternoon.

Now, we are grateful, oh so grateful for the many gains in so many areas that Joy has made. We are thankful beyond words for the life we have together, but there still are moments, and reasons why we still need your faithful prayers, when an unrecognized circle can really “take the wind out of our sails.” Yet then, as has regularly happened, God steered me toward words of Christian Wiman, an American poet, who has also written about his spiritual journey, thoughts that capture so well this seemingly weird place we live in between our joy and sorrow when he writes:

“Sorrow is so woven through us, so much a part of our souls, or at least any understanding of our souls that we are able to attain, that every experience is dyed with its color. This is why, even in moments of joy, part of that joy is the seams of ore that are our sorrow. They burn darkly and beautifully in the midst of joy, and they make joy the complete experience that it is. But they still burn.”

Those sorrows make, “joy the complete experience that it is. But they still burn.” Yep, that about says it for me…

While last Friday had its momentary reality check, the rest of the past week has held some wonderful new experiences especially for Joy and what’s wonderful for Joy is truly wonderful for me. 😊 Joy went to a knitting/crocheting group at our church for the first time, was warmly welcomed and had the chance to share the miracles of God’s mercy and grace since the accident. She then did a repeat with a new knitting/crocheting group in our building, once again sharing her experience of near death but feeling called by God to live and share her miraculous recovery with others. We/she also shared our story with a new Bible study we are in so the week was literally filled with wonderful new opportunities for Joy to share and be warmly accepted despite her “new normal” and to feel so validated and blessed by those who heard her long path to healing. Seeing and hearing her passion to use the tragedy of the accident to honor God’s mercy and grace toward us, brings to my mind another reflection, this time by Dallas Willard, when he says:

For much of our lives, we live in the shallows. Then something happens — a crisis, a birth, a death — and we get this glimpse of tremendous depth. My soul becomes shallow when my interests and thoughts go no further than myself. A person should be deep because life itself is deep. A deep soul has the capacity to understand and empathize deeply with other people — not just herself/himself. A deep soul notices and questions and doesn’t just go through the motions. A deep soul lives in conscious awareness of eternity, not simply today. It notices and observes and reflects in surprising ways — we talk about a person of “hidden depths.”

Hence my blog title today, Joy is certainly a beautiful “deep soul” and a person of “hidden depths.”

And then, as if perfectly timed as a part of our week’s Bible reading, we will leave you with Jeremiah’s cry of lament and praise, sorrow and joy from Lamentations chapter 3…

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.

Remember this: The faithful love of the LORD never ends…