The Joy of Joy
Hello faithful family, friends, and followers and welcome. While this has been a new normal week in all the usual good and challenging ways, it was also a week where I was, once again, blessed and amazed by the indomitable spirit of joy, that my Joy, exudes almost every day.
We were talking with a new friend we had met on our MOA walks and they were kindly exploring ways to pray for Joy and better understand her challenges. With a broad smile Joy said, “Well I can’t see over here (pointing to her right), so I have to turn to make sure I don’t run into things and with much of my brain gone on this side (tapping the left side of her head), I struggle with my words a lot. But God told me after the accident he wanted me to live and serve others, and because Gary needed me, and so that’s what I try and do every day.”
When I stop to consider the long list of physical and cognitive losses Joy has experienced it can bring me to tears of sadness, and yet, when I see Joy’s beautiful spirit shining through her smile, her childlike kindness and wonder, her generosity, her selfless love toward family, friends, and others, those tears can just as quickly turn to tears of thankfulness and joy. While Joy’s healing, this side of heaven, is partial, incomplete, it is nonetheless miraculous when considering the remarkable gains she has worked so hard to achieve.
I observe every day that through her healing, such as it is, Joy lives with an affirming kindness and love for others that reminds me of the following insight shared by Brennan Manning in his book, “The Furious Longing of God”…
Healing becomes the opportunity to pass off to another human being what I have received from the Lord Jesus; namely His unconditional acceptance of me as I am, not as I should be. He loves me whether in a state of grace or disgrace, whether I live up to the lofty expectations of His gospel or I don’t. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am. When I have passed that same reality on to another human being, the result most often has been the inner healing of their heart through the touch of my affirmation. To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful. When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation.
The question is not can we heal? The question, the only question, is will we let the healing power of the risen Jesus flow through us to reach and touch others, so that they may dream and fight and bear and run where the brave dare not go?
The power of God to heal us and for us to be a testimony to that healing, and also to God faithfully watch over us in love, jumped out at me in our shared reading of Psalm 71 this week. The following selected verses seemed to match the age and stage of our life and hopefully our life’s witness when the Psalmist writes…
O LORD, I have come to you for protection;
don’t let me be disgraced.
Save me and rescue me,
for you do what is right.
Turn your ear to listen to me…
Be my rock of safety
where I can always hide…
for you are my rock and my fortress…
O Lord, you alone are my hope.
I’ve trusted you, O LORD, from childhood.
Yes, you have been with me from birth;
from my mother’s womb you have cared for me.
No wonder I am always praising you!
My life is an example to many,
because you have been my strength and protection.
That is why I can never stop praising you;
I declare your glory all day long…
I will keep on hoping for your help;
I will praise you more and more.
I will tell everyone about your righteousness.
All day long I will proclaim your saving power,
though I am not skilled with words…
O God, you have taught me from my earliest childhood,
and I constantly tell others about the wonderful things you do.
Now that I am old and gray,
do not abandon me, O God.
Let me proclaim your power to this new generation,
your mighty miracles to all who come after me.
Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the highest heavens.
You have done such wonderful things…
I will shout for joy and sing your praises,
for you have ransomed me.
The journey Joy and I have been on since the accident has had, has, and will have, its share of ups and downs, but through it all, we have experienced God’s faithfulness, mercy, and grace, in tangible ways that I often struggle to put into words, but regardless, let me close with the following thought from Brennan Manning that speaks to our experience, past, present, and future…
The God I’ve come to know by sheer grace, the Jesus I met in the grounds of my own self, has furiously loved me regardless of my state—grace or disgrace. And why? For His love is never, never, never based on our performance, never conditioned by our moods—of elation or depression. The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender.
