Healing, Hope, and Joy: Faith-Based Reflections after a Traumatic Brain Injury
Healing, Hope, and Joy: Faith-Based Reflections after a Traumatic Brain Injury
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781463443498 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 08/17/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 269 KB |
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Healing, Hope, and Joy
Faith-Based Reflections after a Traumatic Brain InjuryBy Wayne Beatty
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Wayne BeattyAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-4348-1
Chapter One
Suffering to Healing, Hope and Joy
Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope—and hope does not disappoint us. This is the theme of my book, and this is a dynamic and triumphant sequence for our Christian lives. It is powerful and real. The Apostle Paul laid out for us this wondrous sequence in Romans 5:1-5, and this biblical passage provides a wondrous vision for moving through life—through suffering, through endurance, through character, through hope, through hope not disappointing us, and through joy. This sequence in our Christian experiences provides healing for us even in tough times, it provides the strength to endure challenging times, it provides hope in the midst of all of life, and it enables joy. Our personal lives may be difficult at times, with genuine suffering and disappointments, but our lives may also become joyful, victorious, and marvelously healing over time. Sometimes the joy and the victory emerge even in the midst of the suffering. God sent God's Son, Jesus Christ, to live among us, to experience the tough times as well as the good times, to teach us, and to triumph over life and death in a wonderful and victorious way. This is wonderful.
Romans 5:1-5 is a strong passage in which the Apostle Paul proclaimed a remarkable and dynamic process of life and of faith. The text is as follows:
"Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." (Romans 5:1-5, NRSV)
The phrase "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us" outlines a challenging life sequence, but through our Christian faith it also proclaims a triumphant, victorious, and wonderful life sequence. On the face of it, this sequence is not an entirely comfortable one. If we had been the master designer of our universe, we may imagine that such is probably not the way that we would have planned human life or anything else. We can imagine that we would not have planned life and the universe with all the tough experiences and situations that it contains in it. We can imagine all kinds of possibilities about the universe and about life's creation and continuation—even though we know that we have no full comprehension of God's creative work, either in its fullness or in its true nature and loving totality. We cannot, therefore, begin to say what should have happened and what should not have happened in the Creation.
Following this imaginary process of participating in Creation, would you have inserted suffering into the picture? Would you have made suffering such a key part of the flow of human life and of the whole of creation? Why do we need to suffer, why do we need suffering to produce endurance, why is it necessary to endure in order to develop character; and why in the world is there any connection between character and hope?
But there is!
Of course when we start imaginatively probing into the processes of life and of the universe's creation, we quickly realize that we are out of our element in doing so. Creation was and is beyond us, no matter who we are or what we think that we understand. I love to read the writings of many cosmologists, physicists, and astronomers today, and to read about the discoveries that they make, or suspect that they are making, about our universe—or universes, if you imagine that. I reflect some about these scientific insights and reflections later in this book. Scientists have made many wonderful discoveries about this reality in which God has placed us, and they often point to mysteries and difficult to understand realities which are part of our universe and reality. These are usually good for us to read and to consider, but as Christian people, we know that all this is still somehow beyond us, and we know that God created this universe, possibly multi universes, and all of us, and we are profoundly grateful.
We must also say that the reality of suffering is part of life—and it hurts. Suffering is painful, and yet it is part of reality and of our human lives. Suffering is not something that I want to experience or that most of you want to experience, but I have suffered in certain ways, and so have you and all those around you. After all, did you get up this morning singing: "Oh by whiz, by jolly, I think I'll enjoy some suffering today?" No, I doubt that you did, but suffering is part of reality and it is part of our lives some of the time. Moreover, none of us even understands in the dimmest of ways what it took for God to bring Reality into being or to create us or to create the totality of our universe or universes.
Would you agree that the sequence outlined earlier works out in our lives in the way that this scripture passage from Romans 5 suggests? That is, does suffering produce endurance? Does endurance produce character? Does character produce hope? And is it true that hope does not disappoint us? Is this entire sequence a neat little package of reality, and have you ever been troubled by any part of it?
To be sure, in spite of all my sometimes grumbling, I believe that this sequence, this life dynamic, is a sound one, particularly for Christian people. I certainly do not claim, however, that it is "a neat little package." I dare say that each of us has been troubled by one or other portion of this life sequence at various times, particularly by the suffering and the endurance parts. If God faced the task of developing character in human persons, we sometimes may think, couldn't God have found a better way of doing this? Couldn't God have left the suffering and the endurance elements entirely out of the stuff of life? God did not do so, however, and this is one of the great mysteries of life; and strangely, it is also one of the great opportunities of life as well, when we grow in our Christian faith and understanding.
Let's begin with the suffering produces endurance sequence. Does suffering produce endurance? We must be honest and admit that it doesn't necessarily do so. Suffering doesn't automatically result in endurance, not among human persons. There are times when, by contrast, suffering breaks the person, breaks their will, breaks their spirit, and even destroys their hopes. If we are honest, we must admit this. Suffering is sometimes a terrible fact of life, not just in the pain that we or others feel when we suffer, but in the results that we sometimes see in a human life, perhaps even in our own lives or those of persons near and dear to us. We are not like metal alloys which can be subjected to intense heat and pressure and, in a fairly reliable process, produce steel or something else both hard and enduring. No, we human beings make free choices, to hold on or to give in. We endure burdens, or we don't. Sometimes we break under the burdens and the sufferings, and we may submit to despair or worse. Suffering can be a terrible thing.
But sometimes suffering produces endurance. Sometimes suffering brings out qualities of life, strength, determination, and hope in us that we did not know that we possessed, even qualities that we did not know that other persons had in them. Sometimes the results of suffering in a human life can be quite remarkable and can even produce some very positive results. History is replete with examples of people who have grown enormously in the face of suffering—grown spiritually and emotionally at precisely the times when we might have thought that they would have broken. There are men and women today who have lost spouses, lost loved ones in tragic ways; and yet, rather than submitting to unending despair, rather than concluding that their lives are over, have discovered new life, new hope and even sometimes new joy in the face of suffering. There is an old saying that goes, "People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out. But in the darkness, beauty is seen only if there is a light within."
Many times there is a light within. Suffering doesn't automatically produce endurance, but it certainly can, and particularly among Christian people it often does. Even among those who are not Christian people, we will sometimes say that the reason certain persons are able to suffer and to endure is because God's prevenient grace is already at work lifting them up, even sometimes lifting them up apart from their conscious acknowledgment of God's presence. Moreover, when we actively live for God through Jesus Christ, God makes available to us God's own strength and healing love, so that we may live victoriously even amidst suffering, even when we suffer personally.
The next stage in this wonderful sequence is endurance produces character. It may not be quite as difficult for us to believe that endurance produces character as it is to believe certain other parts of this dynamic of the Christian faith and life. After all, we hear people connect endurance with character building all the time. Almost any high school football coach will tell you that a central part of his mission in life is to encourage the development of character in the young people on the football team; and a large part of preparation for playing football is developing endurance, "stick-to-it-ness" and determination. As the old saying goes, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Military training communicates much the same message; and so do coaches and leaders in other sports and arenas of life. Endurance produces character. It can and often does.
But again, it does not do so automatically. It is possible for a person to endure disappointment and injustice, and yet not develop into a person whom we would call a person of character. For example, some persons may endure only for the sake of getting revenge on society or on certain persons or group of persons for some terrible thing that once happened to them or which they imagine other people once forced to happen to them. The mass murderers whom we hear about on radio and television or read about in the newspapers often have this personality profile. They endure only for the sake of revenge and destruction. Such a person is not a person of character.
A person of character is a whole person, a strong person, and a person who deals effectively with the disappointments and the sufferings, even the tragedies of life. A person of character experiences the pain, yes, but does not allow those experiences of pain to defeat him or her, and in fact emerges from the experience stronger, more compassionate, more determined, more loving, and more hopeful than before. It should go without saying that a Christian person, a person of genuine and active faith in God through Jesus Christ, moves in the direction of becoming a person of character. Endurance produces character. It can, and it will in the person with an active Christian faith and life.
We move next to another sequence in this life process, a sequence which can be a wonderful one: character produces hope. We start with some rather grim realities of life—suffering and endurance. We move on to character. We soon learn that living our lives can be difficult some of the time, requiring us to deal with challenges of many sorts, and that living will probably at some time or other involve for each of us some major struggles in life. Most of us would agree that we want to develop strong character, whatever we think that this means; but whether or not we are willing to pay the price required for developing a good and a strong character is another issue. After character, we move on to hope, and that is by definition hopeful, even possibly joyous. As the Apostle Paul put it so wonderfully in the scripture passage from Romans, "hope does not disappoint us." Those are wonderful words of promise.
Hope does not disappoint us! This statement is an affirmation to this whole sequence of suffering, endurance, character, and hope. Character produces hope. It does. When we allow God to work within us in such a way that our reaction to suffering is endurance, particularly the very positive and hopeful endurance of Christian faith—and sometimes endurance alone is a great victory—when we allow God to work within us in this way, the power of God's divine grace starts making us over into persons of Christ-like character, and persons of Christ-like character start seeing the hope in and beyond life. Indeed, a person of Christ-affirming character, a person of strong and trusting faith in Jesus Christ, discovers in life the Joy which is at the heart of God's Creation, which is also our universe. This wondrous reality is in spite of all the terrible mysteries of suffering. As the Apostle Paul put it in the Romans 5 passage: "... and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us."
Christian character, refined through encounters with suffering and endurance, produces hope, "and hope does not disappoint us." This is the best answer to the Why of suffering, the question of why this sequence of life includes dealing with life's grim elements and struggles. We cannot know everything that there is to know about why God made suffering such an integral part of this world and this reality. We may agonize about it and wonder about it, especially when it affects us personally, as I have done often enough. That's natural. But as Christian believers we need to look beyond the suffering and the pain of life and to discover there the hope of life and even of the wondrous victory and reality of God's Kingdom beyond this earthly reality. We need to discover God's wondrous, loving grace moving in and through our lives and the lives of those whom we love, and through the lives of all persons around the world. That's why we should focus our thoughts and our prayers on the wondrous story of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary. He died there for our sins and for the sins of the whole world, redeeming us for life with God. The wonderful Christ event enables us to look ahead most joyously to the hope and the joy of Easter and to the whole of the wondrous Kingdom of God beyond this earthly life. That is a Mystery but it is also a joyful Promise of God's Reality for us. Remember, "Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us."
God, through Jesus Christ, has entered into all this, into the toughness and pain of life, and into the joy of God's promised victory through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on and beyond the Cross. God challenges us to understand that suffering and despair are genuine parts of life, and to understand that God is willing to confront even our most anguished cries on the way to the fullness of joy and meaning in our lives. God further challenges us to point joyfully to and to contemplate "the wonder of it all," the miracle of all our lives and the wonder of what we are called by God to make of our lives and of our total realities, both in the here and now of daily living and in the greater Beyond of life with God. "Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us."
My Terrible Injury
I suffered a terrible accident which resulted in a lengthy coma and a traumatic brain injury in October of 1998, many years ago. The injury was so devastating that I have no memory of it or even of most of the year of 1998 preceding. I am told that my injury occurred while I was riding a bicycle for good health and exercise near a vacation home that we then owned in the mountains of North Carolina, at Lake Junaluska which is near Waynesville. I have no memory of the accident, the injury, or of my five week stay in critical care at the Mission St. Joseph Hospital in Asheville. I have come a long way with my healing over the many years since that early time, however, and I have healed tremendously. I am moving on, and I believe that my life still has many opportunities and challenges in the future. This book is about how our Christian faith helps us to heal and to recover from tough injuries and illnesses of many kinds—not just from traumatic brain injuries. This book is a religious and personal book about dealing with tough events in our lives, about recovering from those tough events, and about how God enables us to move through and beyond our sufferings and all the tough times to an ongoing life containing much healing and joy, and to do this in so many wonderful ways.
While I was still in my coma, another rough but ultimately amazing and wonderful event occurred—an event that seems miraculous to me now. My father died during this time. He was 91 years old, and had experienced some significant age and health problems prior to my injury and coma, so his death had been expected for some time. On the day of his death, however, which occurred after I had passed through three weeks of my coma, he told my mother and my brother that earlier that very day he had experienced a heavenly vision—what he described to them as an amazing "conversation with Wayne on the mountaintop." I was still in my coma in the Asheville hospital. Dad was being cared for in Statesville, many miles distant—but his mind was fine, he knew my situation, and he was very worried about me. I do not remember this time at all or in any way, but he told my mother and my brother that he had conversed with me in that vision, and that it had been revealed to him that I would soon begin to recover.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Healing, Hope, and Joy by Wayne Beatty Copyright © 2011 by Wayne Beatty. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Chapter One: Suffering to Healing, Hope and Joy....................1My Terrible Injury....................7
Our Wondrous Christian Gospel....................12
Chapter Two: Why Must We Struggle?....................13
Endure Trials—and Go Beyond!....................25
Chapter Three: Suffering....................28
A Question Addressed to Jesus....................31
Get Personally Involved!....................34
The Wondrous Promises of Faith and of Hope....................38
Chapter Four: Endurance....................50
Compassion, Shared Grief, and Love....................56
Chapter Five: Character....................66
"Weeping May Tarry ... but Joy Comes ..."....................72
The First Christian Martyr....................83
Chapter Six: The Journey of Kings and the Gospel....................88
The Pride Line....................94
Finished?....................98
Jesus' Resurrection....................104
Chapter Seven: Why Does Life Turn Out the Way It Does?....................107
Parallel Universes....................110
Moving Beyond Spiritually....................116
Hard Usage....................118
Chapter Eight: Hope....................125
Some Basic Elements of the Gospel....................132
Chapter Nine: Hope Does Not Disappoint Us....................144
Hope and Faith....................149
God's Strength Is with Us....................154
Chapter Ten: God Is With Us....................160
We Are All Fragile People....................167
Chapter Eleven: Our Road to Emmaus....................173
The Ascension of Jesus....................179
Chapter Twelve: The Wonder of It All....................182
Imprisoned by Sunshine....................186