Joni (7 page)

Who, or What, is God?
Certainly not a personal Being who cares for individuals,
I reasoned.
What’s the use of believing when your prayers fall on deaf ears?

My doubts began to be as deep-seated as my resentment. When Diana or Dick read a promise from the Bible concerning hope or trust, I shut them off.

“That’s too pat,” I told them. “Those verses are too glib to have anything but surface meaning. Try to apply those promises to me. You tell me how my being here for over a year ‘works together for good.’ What good? Where? When? I don’t want to hear any more!”

And there were people at Greenoaks who added to my feelings of helplessness and depression. Mrs. Barber, attendant on the midnight shift, was as angry and bitter as I was for reasons of her own. She’d often make obscene or insensitive comments designed to hurt and demean those of us who got in her way. To Mrs. Barber, we were not patients in need of care, but hindrances to her routine of chores that had to be done.

One night, she came into our room and angrily swept my pictures off the window air conditioner near my Stryker. “How the——do you think I can turn on this——air conditioner with all this——on it?” she hissed. The pictures had been there for weeks and in no way interfered with its operation.

She picked out a photo of Dick and said terrible things—including that Dick was involved in all kinds of lewd and vulgar conduct. Her perversity sickened me, and I snapped back at her.

She came over to my Stryker and snarled, “I ought to leave you like this until morning and not flip you. But to show you what a nice person I am, I’ll turn you.” With that, she flipped me violently. She had not taken the usual precaution of checking to see that my arms were tucked in first. One arm was loose, and when she spun me, my hand struck violently against the Stryker.

Although my hand was paralyzed and I could feel no pain, it began to swell and was badly bruised. She left the injured arm dangling and rushed out of the room to other duties.

Shaken, angry, and afraid, I began to sob quietly.

“I saw what she did, Joni,” said B.J. “You ought to report her to the supervisor.”

“Yeah. I heard everything. You oughtta turn her in,” added Denise.

“But I can’t report her. She’ll do something else—worse,” I sobbed.

The next day, however, mom came to visit and asked about my swollen and bruised hand. I tried to dismiss it lightly as an accident, but the girls told her what had happened. Incensed, mom went directly to the supervisor and complained in the most vocal terms.

Late that night, Mrs. Barber came into our darkened room, approached me quietly, and put her face next to mine. With a voice that was both whisper and evil menace, she said, “If you ever say anything against me again, you——, I’ll see that you pay for it dearly! Do you understand, you——?”

It was no idle threat. I was terrified, frightened that something horrible would happen to me if I did complain.

In addition to the few who were like Mrs. Barber, who hated patients and having to care for them, there were others who did care, but only a few had time. Nurses seemed to have time only to fill out medication and defecation charts. Most attendants were overworked and poorly paid, and—as a result—some just didn’t care.

These episodes only added to my depression. Jim Pollard was a bright, young quadriplegic who was asking many of the same questions I was. His muscles wouldn’t quite support his head, so it dropped slightly to the left. But his voice, mind, and spirit were strong.

“If there isn’t a personal God who cares about me, then what’s the use?” I asked him.

“That’s the whole point,” he explained. “I’ve done a lot of reading and studying. I’ve looked at religion, philosophy, everything. Life has absolutely no meaning. It’s pointless. Absurd.”

“Then why bother?” I countered. “Why not just commit suicide? In fact, why doesn’t the whole human race commit suicide if life has no meaning?”

“Oh, it can have meaning. Some people believe in God, and that gives them meaning. But when the chips are down—like for us here—you see just how shallow religion is,” he said earnestly.

“But do you think life makes sense?”

“Probably not for us. People on their feet can eat, work, and make love—all kinds of things. ‘Pursuit of happiness’ and all that, y’know?”

I nodded.

“But here. Well, that’s a different story. We’ve reduced life to its barest elements. And, for the most part, there’s no reason to live.”

“Then why are you still alive?”

Jim shrugged. “Guess I’m just not gutsy enough to do myself in. Besides, life does have meaning if you find it for yourself.”

“How?”

“Your mind. Intelligence. I get a kick out of developing my mind. To h_ _ _with my body. Maybe I can find something in being intelligent.”

“Maybe,” I offered. “But what about everyone else? Everyone on their feet. They’re born. They live and die with existence as their only goal. Why bother?”

“You’ve got me, Joni,” he answered. “Why not read some of my books and tracts. I’ve got some stuff here by Sartre, Marx, and other great minds.”

I read it all, and it all pointed me further and further from God and hope—the meaning of life was that
it had no meaning.
Life without an eternal focus, without God, led to despair. I could see this but didn’t know what else to believe. Had not God, if there was a God, turned His back on me?

Jim continued to counsel me in agnosticism. “You see, Joni, nothing will ever make sense. Accept it. Life is capricious as well as temporal. Jobs, success, friends, family—these only have meaning as a means to that end. You’re only here for the moment, so if you want anything out of life, get it now. Don’t get the idea you’re putting something away for an afterlife.”

“But the trouble is, Jim,” I interrupted, “I found out in high school that temporal things don’t satisfy me. There has to be something permanent.”

“What about your accident? That sure isn’t temporary,” he reminded me. “You’ve told me the Bible says even your paralysis works out for good. How? What’s the purpose of your paralysis?”

“I—I don’t know. That’s what’s making me doubt God. If He was real, wouldn’t He show me? Wouldn’t I have some sense of purpose with it all?”

Jim said, “You’re just outgrowing your need for religion and God, Joni. Did you read any of the other books I gave you?”

“Yes. I read
Siddhartha
and Kafka’s
The Trial, Bio-Ethics
—uh—
Man’s Search for Meaning.
All of them. I’ve read every existentialist author you’ve given me,” I told him.

“Well, I’m impressed. Then you ought to know by now that the idea of a personal God is ridiculous.”

“I’m not there yet, Jim. I don’t know. I’ve read everything you’ve given me. These books build a pretty strong case for your point of view. But—”

“But you’re afraid. You think God is sitting up there in heaven waiting to zap you if you have doubts. Well, tell me, Joni. If there is a God, what can He do to you that hasn’t been done already? That’s the way I look at it. I’m crippled. For good. I’ll never be on my feet again. What’s God going to do if I don’t believe? Damn me to hell? I’m already in hell! No—there’s no God, Joni. No God—” His voice trailed off wistfully, as though he had once held out hope that somehow God did exist. Yet now, convinced in his unbelief, Jim was resigned. “There’s no God.”

I prayed desperately: “God I have just two choices: either You exist or You don’t. If You don’t exist, then I don’t see any logical reason for living. If people who believe are only going through motions that mean nothing, I want to know. Why should we go on fooling ourselves? Life is absurd most of the time. And it seems man’s only end is despair. What can I do, Lord? I want to believe, but I have nothing to hang on to. God, You’ve got to prove Your existence to me!”

My mind was a jumble of thoughts and philosophies. Logical, rational, intellectual positions were posed and just as quickly disposed of by opposing concepts, apparently just as valid. What was right? What was wrong? Truth? Oh, what a maze of confusion.
Am I losing my mind as well as my body?

Weary from thinking, my eyelids fell shut. Then, from somewhere, a calmness took over. A thought—or memory—“a still, small voice”—reminded my troubled brain,
You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You.

And I slept.

D
iana came by more and more now. She came so often, in fact, that some visitors thought she was one of the staff. One day she put down the Bible she’d been reading from and said, “Joni, I’ve decided to be a volunteer worker here so I can take better care of you.”

“But, Diana, you can’t drop out of school,” I protested.

“I’ve prayed about it a lot, Joni. I believe it’s what God wants me to do. You see, I don’t know what the Lord has planned for me in the future. I’m going to drop out for a semester or so and ask God for specific guidance for the future,” she explained.

“Yes, but—”

Diana interrupted, “But nothing. While I’m seeking God’s will on this, I’ll be a volunteer—at least until next fall.”

“Diana, I appreciate what you want to do. But are you sure it’s the right thing?” I asked.

She nodded. Her eyes were bright with determination. “Yes. I’ve made up my mind, and I have real peace about it.”

It was good to have Diana around as a hospital volunteer. She busied herself with other patients as well as me. And she watched the nurses and therapists so she could help in even more areas.

Meanwhile, my spiritual confusion was leading me down blind alleys. In my attempts to be open-minded about other concepts, as opposed to belief in God, I became even more confused and frustrated. The more I read, the more tangled my beliefs became. Was there no such thing as truth and meaning? All my reading of Sartre, Hesse, Marx, and others brought me no light.

It seemed the further I opened my mind to these philosophies that denied God, the further I went away from Him. Finally, I became convinced there was little to be learned or understood from these confusing writings. My search had led me back to the Bible.

I began to sense that God was real and that He was dealing with me.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways,” He reminded me from His Word. I needed to understand this—that I could not comprehend my own purpose or meaning without taking God’s deity into consideration.

“What do you mean?” asked Diana when we were discussing this subject one day.

“Well, I’ve been trying to have the world make sense by having things to relate to me. I want to see my life have meaning and purpose. But the Bible says our purpose is to glorify God. My life has meaning when I glorify God,” I explained.

“Yes, I understand,” said Diana. “But how do you get that concept to work?”

“I’m not sure. But I know until now I’ve been looking for a way to make the world revolve around me. Now I’m convinced that I need to plug in some other way.”

“Well, the answers to all questions are in the Bible,” offered Diana. “Maybe if you look for them, you’ll find God’s will.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I think I get impatient because I don’t see life as God does. A year in a Stryker seems like a century to me—but
a year isn’t much time to God. His frame of reference is eternity. Maybe things just take a little longer than I expect.”

“What’s next then, Joni?”

“I don’t know. I—I guess I’ll have to take things one at a time. One, I’m paralyzed and don’t know why God allowed it to happen to me. But maybe I’ll never know why. Maybe I shouldn’t let it hang me up.”

“Then concentrate on getting out of here,” urged Diana.

“Yeah, well, I suppose so. I’m scared, Di. I’m scared, I guess, because I don’t know what’ll happen when I do go home.”

“But that’s the whole point of trusting the Lord, Joni.” She was smiling, her eyes wide in the enjoyment of a new truth that had just come to her. “You don’t have to know why God let you be hurt. The fact is, God knows—and that’s all that counts. Just trust Him to work things out for good, eventually, if not right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Would you be any happier if you did know why God wants you paralyzed? I doubt it. So don’t get worked up about trying to find meaning to the accident,” she scolded.

“Then what do you think I should do?”

“Well, therapy, for one thing. You know how you’ve avoided occupational therapy—you’ve said, ‘What’s the use of learning to write with a stick in my mouth?’ Well, if God knows the ultimate purpose and meaning of things, then He can find or give meaning to a paralyzed life too. But you can’t fight Him on it.”

“But I’m making progress in physical therapy. Why should I learn how to write with my mouth? I expect to get the use of my hands back!”

“But,” Diana paused carefully, “what if you don’t get your hands back?”

I didn’t answer right away. The possibility was not even an option as far as I was concerned. I thought,
I can give up a year or more of my life to lie here paralyzed. I can even sacrifice my legs
and spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. I won’t complain. But, God, You wouldn’t keep me from getting my hands back and leading a fairly normal life! You wouldn’t leave me like this forever, would You?

“Joni—”

“Yes?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t think about the future just now,” said Diana softly, as if reading my mind. “Let’s just take it one step at a time, like you said.”

“I guess I haven’t been setting my mind toward getting out of here. After all, this is a rehab hospital. I should be concentrating on being rehabilitated, huh?”

The next day, I told Chris Brown, my occupational therapist, that I wanted to learn how to do things using my mouth.

Chris was every bit as pleasant, cheerful, helpful, and encouraging as Joe and Earl, my two physical therapy aides.

“My job,” she explained simply, “is to help you learn how to function out there, in the world.”

“That’s all, huh?” I kidded.

“Well, you’ll be doing all the work. So my job is easy.”

“What are you going to teach me?”

“Well, first, how about learning how to write?”

“Okay, Chris, what do I do?” I asked.

“Hold this pencil in your mouth. Grip it with your teeth, like this,” Chris explained. She held a pencil in her own mouth to demonstrate and placed one in my mouth.

“Okay. Good. See, it’s easy. Uh—not so tight. Don’t clench it in your teeth, or you’ll get writer’s cramp in your jaw,” she joked. “Just hold it firmly so you won’t drop it—tight enough to control it. See?”

“Mm-mff,” I mumbled, meaning I understood.

Chris taught me how to make lines, circles, and other marks. At first these were squiggly and wobbly. But after many hours of practice, I began to have more control.

Finally, I was able to make letters. With determination and concentration, I wrote a letter to mom and dad. It was brief, and the letters were still big, awkward squiggles, but it was writing!

This sense of accomplishment gave me a more positive attitude, and I began to enjoy my therapy, reinforced by the encouragement of a staff and patients who cheered every fragment of progress.

In September, I was taken to Kernans Hospital for a second back operation. I didn’t really want to go, but my protruding backbone was still making it impossible for bedsores on my back and bottom to heal. This hospital was only a mile away from our house in Woodlawn, so it was difficult for me to deal with the emotions of being so close to home, yet knowing I couldn’t return there.

This time the operation was successful, for which I thanked God. However, I still faced fifteen days of lying face down in my Stryker. During this time of recuperation, I had a bout with the flu and did a lot of reading. To balance all the negative, agnostic, and atheistic books I had read earlier, I now turned to the Bible and helpful Christian literature.

Mom patiently held the books for me for hours as I read.
Mere Christianity
by C. S. Lewis was a refreshing change and gave a beautiful balance to all that I’d been reading before. It helped my spiritual outlook tremendously.

On October 15, my birthday, I received a most welcome and appreciated gift—I was finally turned face up! It was a grand occasion. Diana, mom and dad, Jay, and Dick all visited me. While there had been a transition in our relationship from sweethearts to intimate friends, Dick was just as faithful as ever in coming to see me.

Back at Greenoaks, things began to look brighter for me. Because the operation was a success, I would eventually begin to use a wheelchair, and I was having an easier time in my various forms of therapy.

It was also encouraging to see people leaving Greenoaks. Some of my paraplegic friends had been rehabilitated and were free to go home and find their way back into the world. This seemed exciting to me—so much so that I plunged into my own rehab with renewed determination.

Chris Brown was eager to tap this new energy and enthusiasm. “Why not do something artistic now, since you can write pretty well using your mouth?”

“Artistic?” I asked.

“Yes. You’ve shown me drawings you did in the past. You enjoy creative things. You can paint these ceramic discs. They make nice gifts,” she explained.

I watched as another quadriplegic held a paint brush in her mouth and slopped paint on one of the clay pieces. It seemed useless—like a kindergarten game.

“I don’t know—” I said quietly.

“Oh, come on, try it,” Chris urged.

“All right.”

I tried the painting, spilling globs of color and splashing clumsy designs on the clay discs. It was discouraging and frustrating. At first, I hated every minute of it. But when the discs came out of the kiln, they looked half-way acceptable. And as I practiced—as with writing—I improved.

After a few weeks, I had created several Christmas gifts for my family and friends. I didn’t know what they’d think of the nut or candy dishes, but I thought they were pretty good—considering. And it gave me satisfaction to know that I had done them myself.

One day, Chris brought me some moist clay.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“I want you to draw a picture on it.”

“How? With a pencil in my mouth?”

“Try this stylus.”

“What should I make? Should I write something?”

“Why not do something to express yourself? Make something that you like,” she suggested.

Carefully I gauged the distance from my mouth to the soft clay, tested the consistency of it with the pointed stick, then tried to etch something.

I told Chris, “The last time I drew something was on our trip out West before my accident. All during my childhood daddy encouraged me to draw. He’s a self-taught artist.” I also recalled that I had particularly enjoyed making charcoal sketches of scenes. Out West, I had filled my sketch pad with drawings of mountains, horses, people, and animals.

I remembered these scenes now and tried to remember the unconscious process of drawing—how the mental image was communicated to my hands, which moved to transfer the scene to paper. My hands held the key to my talent as an artist. Or did they?

I looked down at the simple sketch I had just done. It was a line drawing of a cowboy and horse etched in the soft clay. It wasn’t terribly creative or impressive, but it was a beginning.

Chris seemed amazed at my first attempt. “Joni, that’s great! You’ve got real talent.” She grinned and said, “You should have done this before. You need to get back to your art.”

“But that was when I had hands,” I protested.

She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Hands are tools. That’s all. The skill, the talent, is in the brain. Once you’ve practiced, you can do as well with your mouth as you did with your hands!”

“Wow—really?” I asked.

“Yeah! Want to try?”

“Sure! Let’s do it.”

It was an enormously satisfying day for me. For the first time in almost a year and a half, I was able to express myself in a productive, creative way. It was exciting and gave me renewed hope.

My spiritual temperature was improving too. Earlier, my anger and confusion had turned to resentment. I thought,
How can a loving God—if such exists—allow this desperate situation?
My
search into other areas didn’t turn up a reasonable answer, so when I turned back to the Bible, my bitterness was softened.

I was angry that my life had been reduced to the basics of eating, breathing, and sleeping—day in and day out. But what I discovered was that the rest of the human race was in the same boat. Their lives revolved around the same meaningless cycle—except with them, it wasn’t as obvious. Peripheral things distracted them from the fact that they were caught on the same treadmill. Their jobs, school, families, and recreation occupied them enough so they never consciously recognized that their lives were the same as mine—eating, breathing, sleeping.

And slowly I became aware of God’s interest in me. I was some sort of “cosmic guinea pig”—a representative of the human race on whom truth could be tested. All the distractions, trappings, and things were gone. God had taken them away and had placed me here without distractions. My life was reduced to absolute basics. So now what?
What am I to do with my life?
I wondered.
I have no body, but I am still someone.
I had to find meaning, purpose, and direction, not just some measure of temporary satisfaction.

Even the clean, sterile sheets in the austere ward were symbolic. Eating, breathing, sleeping. Eating, breathing, sleeping.
For what purpose? How can I glorify God? What can I do?

Yes, there has to be a personal God, I reasoned. He may choose not to reveal Himself to me in some spectacular way—but then, why should He? Why was I any more important than the next person who had to find God and purpose by faith, not sight? Why should I be different?

I told Diana of my thoughts. “Nothing is really making any sense yet, Diana. I don’t know what God is doing—but I believe He is real and that somehow He knows—and understands. There’s a positive aspect to my thoughts now. I’m still confused, but before, my confusion leaned toward doubt. Now it leans toward trust.”

“Maybe it has something to do with your prayer before the accident,” Diana suggested.

“What prayer?”

“Remember? You told me that shortly before your accident, you prayed, ‘Lord, do something in my life to change me and turn me around.’ Maybe this is God’s way of answering that prayer.”

“I’ve wondered about that myself. It could be. But it’s sure not what I expected. And He certainly has His own timetable!” I said, adding, “I don’t know His purpose in this. I probably won’t ever walk again. And I don’t see how I can ever be happy again. I guess that’s what really bothers me.”