Undaunted Joy #27

The Return To Joy

This week I have the honor of sharing a guest post from Rachel E. Hicks. Rachel and I met this summer at Image Journal’s Glen Workshop. Here she shares her experience returning to joy after a very tough season for her family.

“For a long season, O Lord,
I considered as an impossibility
what I now know as unshakeable truth:

That after loss, pain, tragedy, tears,
sorrow, doubt, defeat, and disarray,
I will hold a more costly and precious joy
than any I have held before;
and this not in denial of my loss,
but manifest in the very wreckage of it.”

from “A Liturgy of Thanksgiving at the Return of Joy” (Douglas Kaine McElvey, Every Moment Holy, Volume II)

The Return of Joy 

by Rachel E. Hicks

During a long season of crisis, I couldn’t fathom the words of this liturgy becoming real in my life. 

In early 2019, a severe ankle sprain launched my daughter—and our whole family—down a hellish road as it developed into complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). CRPS pain is indescribable. It can go into remission, but there is no cure, and it can spread anywhere there are nerves. It’s nicknamed the suicide disease. 

For almost three years, Jackie endured horrific pain, hospital stays, being bedridden, and the loss of school, hobbies, friends—almost everything. Her CPRS spread to her wrist, lower back, and cervical spine, and she was subsequently diagnosed with several other difficult-to-manage conditions: EDS and POTS.

I can’t describe how dark everything was. How impotent I felt to help. Researching her conditions consumed my days and nights. 

I finally found a shot-in-the-dark option: a clinic in Arkansas that had helped many patients into CRPS remission. We moved there for four months so Jackie could attend daily therapies. Loved ones and even strangers poured out their financial support, making it possible. 

Jackie’s CRPS finally went into remission in July 2021 and she has since remained free of it. Her other conditions are being managed, though she still has some continued disability.

Joy didn’t completely disappear during those impossible days and nights. I recognized a tiny, strange ember of it even in the darkest moments. Mostly it persisted as a quiet and inexplicable strengthening, rather than a shattering, of my faith. But for so very, very long, I could not pray—not beyond Please, Jesus, have mercy.

But now a more apparent and fuller joy is returning. It’s unexpected, delightful. It has taken months of quiet, of a sort of sabbatical season at home. Of remission holding. Of seeing Jackie’s face finally at peace, day after remarkable day.

I find myself laughing more, even able to be goofy again now and then. I wake up from sleep feeling more rested. I can make a meal plan, go grocery shopping, and not be wiped out mentally and physically for the next couple of days. My body and mind are not constantly on edge for the next crisis. I’m able again to be interested in and curious and philosophical about things outside our small circle of suffering.

Most importantly, I’m beginning to sense in my soul a strange gratitude for what we’ve come through. I’m not the only one. Jackie stunned me in the car this summer as we were talking about everything. 

“I wouldn’t change anything that’s happened,” she said quietly. I asked her why. “I’m closer to Jesus now because of it all.” 

How did she get to that place? How did God get her there?

I don’t understand it all, but we are each closer to Him, each a little better because of this long trial. Somehow, it’s all working something good in us. 

I’ll take it.

Bio: Rachel’s poetry has appeared in Anglican Theological Review, Vita Poetica, Relief, The Baltimore Review, and other journals. She is editor of Among Worlds magazine and works as a freelance copyeditor. Read more of her work at rachelehicks.com.