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Joni Eareckson Tada – A Place Of Healing Chapter 2 – God and Healing: What’s The Real Question?
In the 1st and 2nd decades of my paralysis, there were seasons during which my yearning for complete healing and a return to life as it was gripped my heart. It’s not that those desires have gone away in this, my 5th decade in a wheelchair; it has more to do with the change in my perspective.
In the first place, any concept of “normal” is now something so long ago and far away that it seems more like a distant dream. A pleasant dream, yes, but one that has gradually, gently faded through the years, like a well loved snapshot in an old photo album. After 40+ years of quadriplegia, it’s hard to say what a normal life for me would be.
For another thing, as I have mentioned, I find myself in a whole new phase of the battle. It’s not so much the wistful disappointments were occasional frustrations I’m dealing with now, is the seemingly ceaseless attacks – wave after wave after wave of throbbing in my lower back and hip. Now when I think of “healing,” is more in the form of asking my Father for relief from the intensity of the suffering rather than the ability to pick a flower, write a horse, or dance across a field of clover.
Relief from chronic pain – even though I remain paralyzed – would be blissfully, peacefully, joyously “normal” for me these days… and all I could ask for. I don’t remember where I saw the following Mary Jane Iron quote, but it comes pretty close to my take on “normal”:
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure You are…. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in my pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, Your return.
Joni Eareckson Tada – A Place Of Healing Chapter 2 – God and Healing: What’s The Real Question?
Joni Eareckson Tada – A Place Of Healing Chapter 2
