30 Days of Hope for Strength in Chronic Illness by Elizabeth Evans

Author:Elizabeth Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Hope Publishers
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

DEAR LORD,

You know my heart and my mind better than I do myself. I pray that as I plan my day today and every day You will be my guide. I give my plans to You and yield myself to all You have for my life. I ask forgiveness for when I get angry or question why my plan does not go as I wanted. I thank You for this day and I surrender it to You. Amen.

DAY 16

JOY FOR THE JOURNEY

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

—PSALM 51:12

I’VE got joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. Down in my heart to stay. I love this song and I love the word joy. I can name many things that bring me joy: my marriage, my family, my grandchildren, my friendships. Sometimes joy comes in big outward demonstrations and other times it is in the quiet moments shared between two hearts. Memories can open the floodgates of joy. I believe you can laugh without really knowing the gift of joy but you cannot experience real joy in your life without the outward expression of laughter. Oh, how joy bubbles up from within, again and again!

I love to laugh! When I laugh in public, it always brings on stares because it tends to make me cough. When I cough, people turn around. I cough so hard that I turn beet red and the veins in my neck and face stick out. Women with children are hurrying them away as fast as they can, like I am some walking horror show. Or maybe they think I have a contagious disease. I especially get looks when I am in line somewhere in a crowd. If I get tickled at something, I begin to cough and the person in front of me gives one of those half turns with their eyes cut as far in my direction as they can while trying not to appear like they are looking at me. I know they really want to move as far away from me as possible and bathe in disinfectant.

Thinking of how my coughing unnerves people makes me want to tell them—when I can recover my breath—“Hey … this is nothing. A real coughing spell will bring on snorts, sniffs, and spits!” Now that will clear a restaurant quickly. It used to bother me, but I’ve learned to find humor in it. I just try not to embarrass my grandchildren. They are usually the cause for the laughing hyena fits that lead to embarrassing coughing, choking, and gasping for air. What joy!

Thirteen years ago when I got married, the big joke was that my husband was not getting all of me. I have had many surgeries and most of them were to remove something. I have had part of my intestines removed and my gallbladder, as well as a hysterectomy, a radical mastectomy, an appendectomy, etc. So when we talked about our vows, I promised to give my husband all of me … or at least what was still left of me.

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