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Joy
March 4, 2007
Meditation by Karen Little
Ps 97.Jeremiah 31:13 and Gal. 5:22

Joy is such an important part of life. I need to be really clear here. I am not talking about happiness which is a natural response to good happenings. I am talking about joy. I know that in the dictionary there isn’t much difference between joy and happiness but in the spirit’s life there is as much difference between happiness and joy as there is between gold and fool’s gold. Joy is a byproduct of praise and praise is an act of discipline. Joy is also a gift from God. I am not sure how to say this but it seems to me that joy is what God gives to people who have already experienced an intimate
knowing of God (what some churches term “salvation”). And like salvation it is undeserved and changes your whole being.

Do you know what I am talking about?

One of my fears of sharing this portion of my life is that it will be read as bragging, or as one up man ship. Please hear me when I tell you that is not the intent. I sincerely pray that you are hearing how grateful I am at the graciousness of God. I work with grief all the time and I know how different this experience has been. As most of you know my family and I have spent a hard 3 months. My mother began to visibly fail the middle of last November. She decided she could no longer live safely by herself so we helped her move into Claremont. By the time we had moved her she had declined so far that she could no longer find her way to the dining hall. She kept having panic attacks if someone was not with her 25 hours out of 24. And that someone had to be adult immediate family. She was in Claremont less than a week when we realized that she could not get the care she needed in such a setting so we moved her again over to my niece’s home in Paisley. This left two apartments we had to clean and most of Mom’s stuff which had to be sorted through.

In the meantime, my mother, who had always been a very independent, stoic woman had turned into an extra ordinarily demanding patient. She was openly angry with us, with her body which had let her down, and with God. She had my niece and sister hopping 24 hours a day. She could not sleep at all. By this time she could not walk, could not turn over in bed, her body thermostat was blowing fuses left and right but her appetite was good. This went on for 3 weeks. Then Mom woke up on the Thursday before Christmas with her left side paralyzed. Hope and Val took her into the doctor at Lakeview and they found an inoperable tumor in the top of her head. We signed her up with Hospice and took her home.

For my mother this was the turning point. She finally knew what was going on. She called me in on Saturday and asked me the tough question that I wish every hospice patient would be able to ask. “How do I do this?” she asked.
“What do you mean, Mom?”
“How do I go about dying? What do I need to do to die well?”
I am convinced that I have spent the last three years in hospice because it made it possible to answer Mom’s question. I said to her “Mom, you need to get your relationships in order, you need to get your finances in order, and then with all your remaining time you need to praise God.”

I have been thinking about this advice. I am here to tell you that it is never too early to start dying well. Morrie from Tuesdays With Morrie said to Mitch, “If you learn how to die you learn how to live.” Which of us couldn’t benefit from working on our relationships, our finances, and spending more time praising God?

Last week Faith shared two gems of wisdom that is certainly appropriate to what we are talking about today.
"1. Suffering is inevitable in this life. 2. Our life’s work really isn’t to arrive at a particular destination, or to seek deliverance from unpleasant circumstances, but to be conscious of the choices we are making along the way
about HOW we are going to live.”

I said all of this to set the context of what I am about to say. It is precisely in these hard times that we benefit the greatest from consciously choosing praise over complaint. There is a tremendously powerful reward when we choose glorifying God, when we choose gratitude over any of the other possible responses we might fall into. What I
am saying is that context does not instruct, discipline instructs. It is not our life circumstances which dictate to us but a life time of preparation for just such hard circumstances.

Mom could not have heard what I was saying if she hadn’t been making that choice for years. She had been keeping her relationships in order. She had done all the preparation she could do to get her finances in order. She was left with her remaining time to praise God.

It turned out to be two months. She had taken me seriously and began immediately to think on the good things in her life. A week before her death I went over to spend the weekend with her. I arrived on Thursday night and by this time
she was mostly unresponsive. She had been laying in her bed staring at the ceiling, her head at an odd angle because of the tumor’s pressure. She had not said a word for a couple of days. I went in late in the evening on Friday just to chat to her for a couple of minutes because I am convinced that they still hear even when they do not respond. I chatted about innocuous things for a few minutes and then said, “Mom, I know you have been working hard all day. I want you to know how much I appreciate the hard work you are doing…”

I was quiet for a few moments trying to hear her heart answer when all of a sudden I noticed she was nodding her head “yes.” Wow! In our family laziness is the unforgivable sin. It was as if she was thankful someone recognized that she wasn’t just lazing around doing nothing so she came back enough to communicate. “Mom, do you know where you are going now? Do you know how to get there?”

Again a pause and then she nodded a quiet “yes”. I can’t imagine how much energy it took to come back and
communicate these glad tidings. By this time only her right hand worked and she could turn her head from side to side.
Yet she was letting us know what the psalmist knew so long ago: God rules: there’s something to shout over!...God loves all who hate evil, and those who love him he keeps safe, Snatches them from the grip of the wicked. Light-seeds are planted in the souls of God’s people, Joy-seeds are planted in good heart-soil. So God’s people, shout praise to God, Give thanks to our Holy God! (Ps. 97)

This leads into my second point. Joy is a gift from God. Joy is planted in our beings by God and as we live in the Spirit we experience joy as the fruit. (Gal. 5:22)

This truth was demonstrated on Mom’s last day with us. She had finished her interior work the weekend before. When she shared that she knew where she was going and how to get there she had completed her spirit work. I remember laying awake one night after she had come back to share with us trying to do my own inner work. I was restless, could
hardly keep quiet so the others of the household could get some much needed rest. The word that kept going through my head was “disassembly”. Mom was quietly taking apart her life one piece after another until she was left with only the most important pieces still clinging together. Her family, her praise, and her relationship with God -- those were
the pieces left. As my sister said, “She is in there just waiting for her bus.” Suddenly there was a sense of exuberance that was inexplicable. Mom moaned and Val and I went in to turn her. As we left her room Val and I looked at each other and could read the same kind of restless energy in each other. We sat up and talked together. Val finally put her finger on the feeling – she said, “It is like the euphoria I experience after my children were born.”

On that last night she had begun to experience the labored breathing which often accompanies the final disassembly of flesh and spirit. Remembering to breath and then forgetting to for long periods. My niece and sister where there by her bedside. Finally after one of the long periods of apnea, Val said to her, “Mom you don’t have to do this anymore. Go on.”

Mom let it go and left on the journey we all anticipate with mixed emotions. But she left us one last gift. She held open the doors to heaven long enough for some of the light and joy to leak out. Light-seed planted, Joy-seed given.

…For I will turn their mourning into joy and will comfort them, and make them rejoice
from their sorrow. ( Jer. 31:13)