Hello faithful family, friends, and followers and welcome to Friday. Your presence here is appreciated more than we can say and we struggle to express how much your prayers and support mean to us day in and day out.
As I wrote last week and as the title suggests, Joy has had some significant days feeling the grief and loss of many aspects of our “previous life,” in what is now, our “new normal.” While we celebrate and thank God for his grace and mercy shown, and all of you for your faithful encouragement, we were careful this week to take time with these emotions and not just push to move beyond them too quickly.
Many miracles have occurred in our lives including miracles that started before the accident, especially for me (Gary). Looking back now, I see God graciously and lovingly preparing me for what I was unknowingly about to face. Now I understand that may beg the question for some of you, if God was preparing me for what we experienced, why didn’t he just prevent it from happening in the first place. That, I cannot answer. But what I do know is that in several ways God worked life changing realities for me before our trip and the accident, that launched Joy and I on this painful and incredible journey.
A major part of this and larger topic is trusting the sufficiency of God in all circumstances, which is something I hope to delve into more deeply in future posts in our “Reflections” section. However, relative to our reality this week, was God’s prompting me to re-read Carol Kent’s “A New Kind of Normal: Hope-filled Choices When Life Turns Upside Down,” on our travel day to Florida. I’ll let you look up the details on the book if you are interested, but not only did re-reading this book, days before the accident, help prepare me emotionally and spiritually for what I would face, but in the introduction, Carol makes a statement that for Joy and I captures a major theme and purpose we hope our blog will convey.
Carol states, “This book is about choices - not the kind we place on goal charts, but the choices we all need to make when our carefully developed life plan takes a U-turn or comes to a sudden halt. It's about discovering fresh hope and renewed courage when we would rather give up. It's about willfully choosing to make the future better, even if we don't receive a tangible benefit for making the effort. It's about choosing not to waste the sorrow. It's about giving hope to others in the middle of our brokenness and tears, because it is all we have to offer. And because it is all we have to give, it is enough.”
I especially appreciate, “It's about choosing not to waste the sorrow. It's about giving hope to others in the middle of our brokenness and tears, because it is all we have to offer. And because it is all we have to give, it is enough.” That sums up our past week very well. We did not want to “waste the sorrow,” and so we spent some time in it. Not planning to live the rest of our lives there, but spending the time needed to feel we’d embraced it as fully as possible, had honored it, and worked to make it a traveling companion for the time being, that while still present, would not prevent us from the march forward, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
As I have mentioned previously, one of the major areas of “sorrow” for Joy is the loss of so much of her language capabilities. Joy has been working very hard to make gains in her reading, but language continues to be a major nemesis, especially the English language! Why is “read” sometimes, “reed” and sometimes “red.” Why does the “ie” in “pie” sound like an “i” but the “ie” in piece, sound like an “e?” Why does the starting “e” in “ever” make a short “e” sound, but in “even” a long “e” sound? And these are just a few of the conundrums we’ve run into this morning!! Thankfully, Joy is not deterred and works even harder to restore her understanding of this language we use not only to communicate, but to think with, and that “thinking” part of language, is one of the more challenging areas for Joy as she tries to process lost facts and knowledge. Yet, I am so very proud of her!
And so as to not to allow language frustrations or grief and loss to be the only topics here, we had a wonderful and very positive day on Wednesday when we did a day trip to visit Joy’s mother Ruth in IA. We took the gluten free muffins and baked oatmeal squares we had made for her and visited with two of Joy’s brothers, Dan who lives in the area and David visiting from Ohio. Our time in IA was clearly encouraging to all and Joy tolerated doing the whole trip (about 4 hours each way), in one day, very well. Also, the ongoing beautiful weather we’ve been experiencing has allowed us to continue our frequent walks and we are enjoying the early signs of fall as the trees start to turn crimson along our walking paths.
Last but not least, in yet another positive, Joy is finding more of her own voice for sharing her experience and she has published a new post today in “Joy’s Corner” which you will be sure to want to check out.
In one of Alyx’s CaringBridge posts early on in our journey they shared, “As I've told a few of you in other places, I'm feeling a lot of things right now, but "alone" isn't one of them, and I'm so, so grateful for that.” That statement does a beautiful job of summarizing how Joy and I feel even when we are processing our grief and loss. Your faithful prayers, compassionate support, and encouragement, allows us to confidently say, “we are feeling a lot of things right now, but ‘alone’ isn't one of them, and we’re so, so grateful for that.”
