Golden Intervals
“For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock.” — Psalm 27:5
Jay was my favorite sister. With her tousle of blonde curls, she looked like Betty, the fair-haired girl with the ponytail in the Archie comics. Even though she was older, she didn’t treat me like a tagalong. She liked me. I tried to copy everything she did. And I could never understand why Bert Parks didn’t want her for the Miss America Pageant.
Jay must have known how much I looked up to her. Maybe that’s why, many years later in the early 70s after my accident, she asked me to come live with her. There was lots of room in the old stone house up on the farm. I was still a novice at being a quadriplegic, struggling to adjust to life in a wheelchair. But Jay made the early years of adapting to paralysis bearable. Sometimes, even sweet.
My favorite memory was one late summer evening on the back porch under a full moon when Jay pulled up her rocker. There, with crickets calling under the willow and fireflies floating over the creek, with moonlight on her golden hair, we lifted up our voices on a beloved old hymn… “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains….” We didn’t need accompaniment. I slid my harmony beneath her melody as our voices, soft as country down, blended into the night and made our praises to God as sweet as honeysuckle.
Even in the hardest and darkest of times, our loving Father weaves treasured memories and intervals of music and laughter through our lives. And when we sing aloud of his goodness and grace, our pain—even if only for the moment—loses its grip.
Taken from Joni’s Pearls of Great Price devotional.
