Some Words from Joyce
Hey, this is an important announcement to all you who heard that I had died. Well, I think No! In fact, your source of information wasn't terribly accurate!
Of course, like so many of you, I've gone through a lot. A number of times I felt I was drowning in the cold and rough sea of despair.
Then there were those times I couldn't feel at all--after a stroke, a fall at
the Austin airport, a subdural hematoma, a seizure, an emergency craniotomy to save my life, and eight days in a coma on life support. No wonder those rumors about my death were started.
But the real "death knell" came when I developed pneumonia. My marvelous doctors decided the risks were too great to keep me on life support. So they performed a bedside tracheotomy. Though I regained consciousness, the trach stayed in for about three weeks. Naturally, when my friends outside the hospital got the news that I, Joyce, hadn't talked for a month, knowing me--many assumed I must be dead. So, other than the actual facts, it was a quite well-founded false rumor.
Making a long story not quite so long, through the healing mercy of the Lord, the constant, loving care of my husband, Francis, the faithful prayers and favors of thousands of you, and the tender and able care of many doctors, nurses, and medical technicians, I recovered from the stroke, subdural hematoma, craniotomy, and an eye aneurism surgery enough that I can now talk and walk unassisted, read and write on my own, and plan and prepare what my husband insists are the best dinners in the history of the universe. I am also recovering my gift and love
as an extraordinary shopper. And wonder of wonders, my dear friend Georgia Boone discovered, on the internet, a simple way to control the chronic cough that had tortured me day and night for eight years.
One of the first things the specialists told Francis after my stroke and head injury was that an almost certain side effect would be chronic fatigue. To my chagrin, they were right. Though the Lord has so miraculously and lovingly brought me through so many impossibilities, He has not yet seen fit to relieve me of this one. I am in God's Waiting Room for chronic fatigue, usually 15-18 hours each day. And for a
lady in her 80's who spent most all of her life before 10/11/2001 about as on-the-run around the country and the world as one can get, the chronic fatigue waiting room is just about more than I can stand.
But from day one of this ordeal over eight years ago, Francis, has said again and again,
"I can't tell God what He has to do, but I know what He can do. He can do anything that He knows is good for Joyce. And I'm
trusting Him to do it."
We don't know why the fatigue is still with me, day and night. But in His time and will for me, chronic fatigue will be no more difficult for my Lord than any of the other waiting rooms where He has sat by my side over the years of my life.
Been there! Done that! The truth is, actually, that I am very much alive!! And as H.G. Spafford wrote to his wife in his majestic hymn, after all four of their daughters drowned in a ship wreck, It is well with my soul!
I can tell you, for sure, my soul is alive and well!
How's yours?