A Cheerful Heart Makes Good Medicine

Around 5:00 June 9th Pat and Jodie left to go to the exercise class that Pat leads three times a week. I stayed home because I felt very sick, but I promised Pat I would work with Joel on his math for half an hour. After waving goodbye to them, I roused Joel from his Harry Potter book and we settled down on the couch. I cannot say how rewarding it is to work with Joel on math. I don’t know if it is Joel, the math, or some magic combination, but after each of the two or three times I have worked with him I have felt satisfied and energized, very well pleased. I finally empathize with how Mom comes home in raptures after teaching math classes. Joel is patiently cooperative and there is a conspiratorial feeling to how we puzzle through the problems together. I am pleased when he takes my studying advice, keeping notes on what kinds of problems he got wrong the first time, and so gratified when he gets similar problems right when we come to them later. By the time we came to the end of one worksheet we both felt tired but accomplished, and no wonder, a full hour had gone by, twice as long as had been required.

The rest of the time before Pat returned, Joel and I sat together in the living room reading our respective novels, comfortably together in an amicable silence. When Pat and Jodie did arrive back at 8:00 I greeted them with almost giddy enthusiasm, feeling emotionally warm and accessible. I robustly joined in helping Pat and Grandma Margie with the dinner preparations while babbling best I could past my inflamed mouth about how a cheerful heart is the best medicine and how I couldn’t wait to be well again because it was sure to feel something like this!

It is amazing the difference that a lightness of spirit makes in one’s experience of external circumstances. I felt that evening, the day you received my most dejected email, that with a buoyancy of hope and cheerfulness, physical impediments can be endured with grace. It is like how if one only has a friend with them, an otherwise intimidating and foreign experience is transformed into an adventure. Truly, a cheerful heart is good medicine! The problem, as I explained to Pat and Margie while combining oil, egg, and mustard powder to whip up some mayonnaise, is that a cheerful heart can’t be bought from a pharmacy. Once weariness and doubt wear down your faithful hope and bitter thoughts are able to creep into you heart, once pain or fear or disappointment trip up your steadiness of spirit, even though you know in your mind that God has not changed and that you are not alone, how do you find again the cheerful heart that the Bible prescribes? That is the dilemma and once solved, the answer would serve well any health worker, be he or she promoting physical, psychological, or spiritual health.

Today, June 11th, I really do feel much better, physically and emotionally. The sores on my face are beginning to peel away and red skin underneath is not nearly as sensitive as before. The whole family was treated for lice last night, so hopefully that trial is behind us as well. Still, I know that health is always transitory. Perhaps I will have some time of health, letting me focus my attention and blogging on other areas of interest. Or perhaps some new affliction will arise within the hour, forcing my eyes only onto God and healing. In any case, please please please, continue to pray for God to sustain in me a cheerful heart. This variable of peaceful hope is the element which makes all the difference.

I would also greatly appreciate your continued prayer for the physical well-being of those who are here in this home, in this compound. As I start to recover, three of the children of various hostel staffers who live in the compound with us are suffering from various illnesses. The most alarming of these illnesses is a two and a half week fever which does not respond to malaria medication though the girl tested positive for malaria. Even closer to home, Mrs. Margie Stock has returned to her bed with a fever and other symptoms much like those that sent her to the hospital in Karachi a few weeks ago. This resurgence of dangerous symptoms is particularly inconvenient because Mr.Fred, Mrs. Margie, and Ashley are supposed to fly out of the country Monday! Please pray for God, the Great Physician, to be with us here in this compound, for the healing of the staff children, for the full and swift recovery of Margie, and for my own recovery to continue unabated. But again, most of all, pray for strength of spirit. Trials always come and go and replace each other in different forms. May God give us all the grace to prevail and grow through all kinds of circumstances.