Because we are assured of eternal life in heaven, we can endure anything in this temporal life on earth. When we know our end is glorious, we can joyfully and willingly live for him no matter what our circumstances. This is true comfort, and it is unchanging.
After a long day with an aching eye, going from a walk in clinic to the emergency room to the specialist’s office, I felt my heart sink and sighed, resigning to the reality I had feared. I was back to blind.
First, joy takes time. Joy is not fast food. It comes, I would say, as a by-product of living a savored life, of having time and taking time to “smell the flowers,” as we used to say. There is this old monastic insight about living a joy-filled life. Take time, take at least some time each day, to do one thing at-a-time.
Somewhere along this rocky, twisting, unwanted adventure of chronic illness comes a place of wrestling with God, with self, with letting go. But it’s OK. Because spring is almost here, hope watered in tears, ready to push through the grief, and burst into light.
