Before You Begin
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
I’ve seen plenty of babies handle a bottle of milk with their hands and feet, but this two-year-old didn’t need her hands. Her mother, sitting next to me in the prayer circle, had placed little Melissa on the floor and, as we prayed, the eyes of this child held my gaze.
Melissa had to use her feet. She was partially paralyzed from large tumors, so she gingerly picked up the bottle with her toes and placed it neatly to the side of her head. Her eyes darted to me, and I smiled. This was now a game of skill, so Melissa reached again for the bottle, tightened her toes around it, and set it down on her other side.
Melissa was pleased with herself. Her eyes sparkled, and the game continued. After prayer time her mother, Sue Burke, told me that Melissa also enjoys using her feet to play with toys and turn pages of books. “She can’t walk and doesn’t have much use of her hands,” commented Sue as she lifted her daughter into a wheelchair, “but she loves to go to the park to watch the children. She gets as much of a charge watching as the kids do from playing.”
I believed it. I also believed I saw tears in Sue’s eyes, making them glisten with pride for her daughter. I felt Sue’s long and silent struggle in watching her two-year-old suffer pain and loss, and I had to finally ask, “Please, I must know. How do you…do it?”
Sue reached for her husband’s hand and, with the other, stroked her daughter’s head made bald by chemotherapy. “God has taken us down a rough and rocky road, but we always make time to stop, reach down, and find a few diamonds in the dust.”
Diamonds in the dust. Precious jewels we might pass over. Just a sliver of Scripture but packed with power. Just short words from the Lord but cutting and convincing. A fragment from a proverb. A snippet of a psalm. Small treasures that sometimes blind us with their brilliant truth.
In fact, I brushed off a dusty diamond when I listened to Sue describe her daughter’s joy at watching children play. That toddler gave new meaning to the word “vicarious.” She experiences the joy of play through others. For her, it’s enough. And we experience joy unspeakable through the vicarious death of our Lord. For us, it is enough, more than enough.
Sue might not want you to know this, but she and her husband have always had a rough and rocky road. They get tired. At times, overwhelmed. Income is tight and help is not easy to find. Hope is hard to come by when you know that your child has only a short time to live. Yes, they get down. But sometimes, looking down gives the best view of diamonds in the dust.
The book you hold in your hands is my treasure trove of diamond chips I’ve collected over the years. I’ve carefully selected favorite gems, ones I’ve often held to the light, turned this way and that to admire their beauty, diamonds that have made me rich in faith and wealthy in hope.
But I’m not the only one. Look down at your feet. The path sparkles. God has placed diamonds in the dust of your road, too!
Joni Eareckson Tada
Summer 1993