Whatever you’re experiencing in life right now, Jesus’s grace is more than enough to carry you through it.
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Grieving with Hope – In Grieving with Hope, Randy gives perspective and practical advice to help readers on the grieving journey, so that in time, your grief will be accompanied by joy and hope. Use the coupon code: RADIOGIFT for free shipping!
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Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada to share hope when things are hard.
And given that tomorrow is National Grief Awareness Day, hope-filled words are definitely needed for a lot of you, our listeners maybe struggling with loss. And my friend Tracy Traylor is one of them. Many years ago, when she was a freshman at Baylor University studying design, she drove home one weekend to visit her folks. It was raining hard, her tires slid on the pavement, and Tracy crashed into a tree on the side of the road. Her head hit the windshield, and this beautiful young woman suffered a terrible brain injury, and she became paralyzed. The injury caused her to lose her speech, but thankfully, she remained bright and alert, but Tracy couldn’t speak or use her hands. She landed in a wheelchair, had to stop college, and after rehab went home where her mother became her primary caregiver. Sometime later, I met Tracy when her parents brought her to a Ligonier Conference where I was speaking. And after my plenary, Tracy and I parked our wheelchairs side-by-side, and her mother helped interpret her daughter’s muffled words. We became good friends from then on out. And through the years, we have remained buddies over the emails.
Tracy’s profound injury was a huge loss, but her mother helped her pursue her love of design, especially in jewelry. Tracy gave instructions and her mother served as her hands. And you can imagine this sweet relationship between a mother and a daughter. Her mom was everything. Her mother was Tracy’s hands, Tracy’s interpreter, and providing the best caregiving day-in and day-out. And then I got an email that was so heartbreaking. Tracy’s mother had passed away. I wondered how my friend would manage, and this is what she wrote in her next email. These are her exact words: “Joni, my pastor and I were communicating about mom’s death. I admitted that I had to let go of the hold, the grip that I had on mom. My hands would then be free so that they could grab Jesus. In the Bible, there was a woman with a horrible sickness; no one wanted to be around her. But she touched Jesus and her faith healed her. And the same is true with us. We must let go of the things that hold us…Our Lord gives us his strength to let go. There are many things we can grab for comfort, but THE ONLY GRAB [all in capital letters] that matters is the one we have on Christ.”
It was one of the most remarkable things I had ever heard from a profoundly disabled person. God gave her the amazing grace to be able to release her hold on her mother, even in the midst of grief. Tracy allowed Jesus to enter her grief, and he gave her the strength to trust him with her huge loss. You know, Randy Alcorn in his booklet called “Grieving with Hope” wrote that “Grief will come. But it should not drive us from God. It should drive us to him. We were made for a person and a place—that is Jesus and heaven. And grief reminds us that the world is not as it was meant to be. But it also points us forward to a world where grief itself will be forever abolished.” Man, I love that perspective—and believe me, it’s the way Tracy is dealing with her loss. She is looking to Jesus, and she is looking to heaven. So, if you are mourning the loss of a loved one, let me send you Randy Alcorn’s booklet “Grieving with Hope.” Just go to joniradio.org and ask for your free copy. Let your grief guide you to God, and not away from him. So, get help at joniradio.org.
© Joni and Friends