Hello faithful family, friends, and followers. Welcome to the new year and thank you for your continued interest, prayers, encouragement, and support. We seemed to spend the past week alternating between outbursts of joyful tears and times that literally took our breath away in the awareness of the grace and mercy, miracles and experiences, that characterized the culmination of a year that defies description. I kept having flashbacks to the holidays of 2023 and what seemed like the oh so normal plans for our trip to Florida in February. We were returning to the same property we had visited the year prior, we knew the area, loved being right on the beach and looked forwarded to the long walks on the sand as the waves lapped at our feet. The start of the trip lived up to our expectations in every way and for eight and a half days we enjoyed sun, sand, and beautiful ocean waves. Then came the afternoon of February 27th, a day that would “go down in infamy.”
For those of you who have followed us from the beginning you already know the twists and turns of our journey these last ten and a half months. From the early life threatening days, to the long road of healing, recovery, and rehabilitation. Over those days, weeks, and months we have experienced the miraculous and sustaining sufficiency of God love and provision. We are thankful in so many ways for the natural division that has occurred with wrapping up therapy sessions in December allowing the new year ahead for us to chart our continued recovery journey on our own - with God’s help and with your prayers. We certainly can and will return to professional medical resources when we need them, but welcome the chance to “do life” in this new paradigm and reality. Joy’s continued physical strengthening and endurance along with cognitive, memory, and language exercises and my own exercises for the chronic knee and back pain left over from the accident. We have plenty to keep us busy, but are so thankful for the fact that we can pursue healing together supporting and encouraging each other all the while feeling the support and encouragement from each of you.
As we look ahead to the new year I want to offer and invite you to consider two prayers, one for the year by Thomas Merton and a daily prayer which was enhanced by Brennan Manning based on the original by Charles De Foucauld.
For this year:
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
For each day:
“Abba, I surrender my will and my life to you today, without reservation and with humble confidence, for you are my loving Father. Set me free from self-consciousness, from anxiety about tomorrow, and from the tyranny of the approval and disapproval of others, that I may find joy and delight simply and solely in pleasing you. May my inner freedom be a compelling sign of your presence, your peace, your power, and your love. Let your plan for my life and the lives of all your children gracefully unfold one day at a time. I love you with all my heart, and I place all my confidence in you, for you are my Abba.”
These are our prayers for this year and each coming day. We thank you for walking into this new year with us and for your faithful interest and encouragement. We look forward to sharing more our of adventures and of finding joy in the days and weeks ahead in the familiar and in new unexpected places.