..the way we were....

"...Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow...."
                                                                                                                  Jeremiah 31:13, NIV

"...Remember not the former things, nor consider things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"                                                   
                                                                                                                   Isaiah 43:18,19a, NIV

"And I confess that so many time I get discouraged and fail to see the big picture, and get so bogged down by my plan and how it differs from what actually transpires! Yes,  I know that the enemy is real and he tries to get us discouraged and distracted, doesn't he? We get so caught up in the details, becoming frightful and fearful and loose track that OUR GOD is the God of every detail. I continue to thank HIM, that my Abba Father knows the beginning, the middle, and the end... of each event, of each and every moment, and that He promises that it will work out for good...and will Bring Him GLORY, someway, and somehow, because He is in control of every detail. And in times like this week, I know and believe with all my heart that He is always there. When we cannot control the actions of others, and know not what to do, He guides us and answers our prayers with His comfort and His loving, perfect plan."                                                                excerpt from an e-mail written by Karen, April 2005


"...and you should have seen Karen dancing!", the director of the memory care center said to me today; someone had come to play the piano for the residents this morning, and Karen had come up front of everyone and was dancing with joy and abandon. The director told me this assuming that I would be glad that Karen could still perform, but it caught me up short: Karen never liked to dance. As a frustrated amateur drummer, I always had a modicum of rhythm, and learned to dance early (won a twist contest in the 1960's, go figure) and would often ask Karen to dance with me on our evenings out; she would seldom refuse outright, but participated woodenly, always on the lookout for a way to avoid the dance floor. Today's report of her terpsichorean activity was one more reminder of who Karen is, now: she is not the woman I have known. She now likes onions; never before. She will eat a bottle of maraschino cherries; when I first met her, she was allergic to them. Loving to sail and be on the ocean in the past, now totally avoidant and phobic of direct sunlight. The list goes on. I don't know who she is.

"...I found this from 2005 and thought it might be special for you...", read the email from a treasured friend that has known me since my first trip to Russia in 1993, the trip that started Karen's and my involvement with missionary care. This friend had finally started to clean out her email from the past (really, really past) and had come across a lengthy note that Karen had written her in early 2005 just as we were back from some stateside trip and in preparation for a work in Africa. While I of course knew the details, I had never seen the email before as it had been written by Karen to be sent only to this friend. As I read it (brief excerpt above) I was again stunned by the memory of who Karen was, her way with words, her trust in God; this would have been written only a little over a year after we had first found that something was going wrong with her memory, but clearly she was still in full command of her thoughts, words, and expressivity. I have not seen this Karen, the wife that I knew, for at least four years. I had forgotten who she was.

As I started the usual route of emotion that I take at a time such as this, pondering all that we have lost, I was soon confronted with the image of Karen, laughing and dancing and loving it; I am not sure I have ever seen her do that, and now she can. Her new residence encourages it (in ways I would not have known, nor tried, to do) and provides opportunities for expression without the impediments of memory. She no longer feels ill at ease in expressing her joy in dance. This is a new thing. This is a good thing. I think that this is a God thing.

Being caught on occasion betwixt and between my experiencing the who she is and who she was, who we were and who we are now, is still bittersweet. But there is the sense that in fact there is a purpose in this something new. There will be a time when what was, and what isn't, will be consumed by an eternity of what is, and there will be no bitter in the sweet. It is a slow work, but in God's own way, He is teaching me a bit of the joy of what will be.

And Karen is, in her own way, teaching me to dance....

Stay in touch...
Barney