Hello friends, family, and followers. As a I have said many times before, your faithful prayers and attention to Joy’s journey, mean more to us than we can ever say.
The past week has seen Joy continue to do well physically as was attested to by a physical therapy re-assessment on Thursday which went very well as expected. While I know I sound like a broken record, and while we are very thankful for the physical gains, Joy’s eyesight, aphasia, and apraxia continue to pose the biggest challenges in life and emotions. Joy was in tears much of the day Thursday, after what she felt was a very challenging speech therapy session, in which she struggled to find words and their meaning, spelling, and pronunciation. Keep in mind, these are not “big” words, today we spent several minutes trying to say and spell “on.” Words Joy has one minute, may disappear the next to her utter frustration, especially when she realizes she can’t say my name or the names of one of our children or grandsons, which she may have said moments earlier.
Joy sees, “well enough,” to do many things, but also only sees, “well enough,” to not be able to do many things of which she is very fond. She started to do embroidery, but got very discouraged over not seeing well enough to do the work to her own quality standards. She’s knitted a scarf and several more baby hats, but can’t read directions to try other projects and so feels stuck. Friends and family are there to help, but not always at the moment she’s feeling the most frustration. I’m very thankful for a dear friend of Joy’s who mentioned her enjoyment of jigsaw puzzles. Joy remembered this and at one of her low points brought it up. We got a couple of puzzles yesterday and since then Joy has been engrossed in and enjoying them tremendously.
The scope of Joy’s improvement from near death to where she is at today, is truly a testament to the grace, mercy, and healing power of God and of the power of collective prayer and is nothing short of amazing. But we find ourselves now in what feels like a period of trying to run through water. Joy was an avid reader and had many interests in artistic crafts, music, gardening, cooking, care of our grandsons, and volunteer opportunities. Now her world has become quite small. She cannot read and she struggles so much to understand spoken words that she cannot follow a movie, television show, or audio book story line. I’ve tried reading many styles of books to her, but again, even if I read slowly, she can’t follow the story line long enough, and then remember it well enough, to make sense. I have also tried many devotionals and thankfully there is one that she is generally able to track with as I read.
At the same time, we have many times of genuine enjoyment and since Thursday, Joy has been in a much better mood and felt more accomplished with her therapy homework, has enjoyed our walks around the lake, and this afternoon enjoyed a jaunt to St. Paul to celebrate Alyx’s birthday. Their birthday was last Monday, but they were out east at the time and so today we enjoyed being together with Alyx, Ethan, and Nova at our favorite, dog friendly patio seating, restaurant (they even have a dedicated dog menu 😊). Joy did very well and felt our first restaurant outing was a real measure of success and I agreed.
I’ve said before, Joy and I have a very wonderful, often feeling, “very near normal,” life day to day. Then we spend minutes trying to say and spell, “on,” and we are snapped back into the reality of Joy’s long healing journey. Not to say that it isn’t still wonderful, because it is, but that wonderful is mixed with the recognition of how far we have to go.
So, as I have said many, many times, please pray earnestly for healing of Joy’s eyesight, her aphasia, and apraxia. Healing of brain tissue, cognition, and recognition of words, read and spoken, and of course, for emotional wellbeing and encouragement as well.
Thank you for your willingness to persevere with us and for your continued interest and compassion. Your faithfulness and dedication are a very real encouragement to us as we travel this road.