I find myself in a similar place I was a year ago. My next season is hazy and uncertain. My ears are continually failing me.
Everyday is a challenge as I navigate a hearing world with deaf ears. I lay in bed at night thankful to turn off the hearing aids and finally rest my tired eyes from lip reading. I turn over thoughts of the day, the extreme emotions and frustrations. I wake up and instantly place the little computers back in my ears and start all over again. I experience isolations, little comments, great confusion each hour. I sit back and watch a busy chaotic world make out words I do not understand. People around me are unaware I am in a bubble of loneliness.
Yet everyday I have a choice.
Will I dig deeper a pit of despair and pain that my circumstances bring? Am I going to wallow and turn around in my head brokenness and how I am the victim of the story?
Or will I steadily and through great courage, choose rescue? The space where Jesus is going to step into the story and make me the Victor through His Victory?
We have the choice of joy or despair. Despair keeps us looking at ourselves and in our little worlds of pain. Joy transcends ourselves and looks beyond ourselves into seeking out people in the same places we once were with news of rescue.
I go through seasons of waking up heavy. I sit at the crossroads of joy and pain everyday. I wake up to flashing lights and silence, and the Lord presents me with a choice as I place my hearing aids back in…
“Are you going to choose Me, your JOY? Or choose to keep digging yourself deeper into a hole of sorrow?”
Choosing Joy is not an ideal or daydream. It is not fluffy or light. It is a gritty, fighting choice to consciously on the forefront of my mind choose Jesus over everything else. It is not a magical switch but a determined state of mind.
Even as I have experienced more pain in my hearing loss this past week, I recall the patterns of rescue. Things have happened to me this past week that should debilitate me and knock me out forever. However, I choose the fight because I see the joy awaiting me. I know God brings good from every situation and that every painful encounter will bring freedom for someone else. I was brought through painful things because now my ministry is extended in places I did not know needed rescue yet. I should’ve been taken out but God in turn, is using this as a launching pad.
“He led me to a place of safety; He rescued me because He delights in me.” Psalm 18:19
“You will show me the way of life; granting me the joy of Your presence and the pleasures of living with You forever.” Psalm 16:11
Will you choose JOY instead of the present circumstances?
This picture is the Bible given to my mama from my mammy during the time they found out I was deaf. She underlined Romans 8 with “Emma Scripture 2000” because she was in desperate need of rescue. Little did we know, rescue would not only come for me and my family but for thousands through Aid the Silent. He is working rescue in ways you cannot quite see.