Tag: Joy

Sustainer

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I’ve always related to George in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. 

Maybe that’s how you find the people who feel like they don’t belong. Maybe that’s the litmus test for people who feel like they don’t belong. Maybe we all kind of feel like we don’t really belong?

George did things the right way, and it seemed to make his life worse. Harder.

Financial, personal, and family burdens overwhelmed him. The good of the past can feel so far away, and so unlikely to ever return again in the face of a crisis that looms unending.

As George felt overwhelmed by the burdens of life and the responsibility of family, he made a wish that he was dead. He quickly revised the statement, recognizing that it would be painful for his family members if he died. He instead wished that he had never been born. In the movie, George got to see what the world would have been like if that statement were true. If he hadn’t ever been born. And He saw how much his life mattered.

I guess I sort of just wish that George’s story will be mine some day.

That one day, God will show me that he used my life for good and that I matter.

Because sometimes, when my life feels insignificant, it’s encouraging to remember that it’s not.

In psychology the professor told us, “People with depression have an attribution style that is internal, stable and global. It sounds like “I suck. I suck at everything. I (or my life) will always suck.”  

It can be a fight to have an attribution system that is closer to the truth. It can be hard to have an external, unstable and specific attribution style. “I failed at this one thing, and these circumstances played a part. I will get better at this thing. My life will get better.”

Yeah, and maybe the hardest of all is the Truth itself. It is sovereign, eternal, and assured. “God has allowed me to experience this hard thing. It has an eternal purpose. This grief/pain/brokenness/depression is not forever.”

I told it to myself, talked myself out of that internal/stable/global style, but I’m not sure that I really believed that I would ever feel crazy joy again.

Can I be honest?

There were days/weeks I felt like George Bailey and wished that I had never been born. I would never harm myself, but heaven seemed so far away, and life looked like a whole lot of pain and not a lot of joy stretched out before me. God not creating me, or at least not the way he wired me, seemed tempting.

But what’s lovely is looking back at how God’s love was enough in the darkness to sustain me to a full joy. Even on my worst days, at the worst times, when things felt wrong in so many different areas, God’s love sustained me through the darkness.

It’s easy to praise the light in the light, but it’s easiest to notice the light in darkness. It can be easiest to lie prostrate in the darkness. It’s our desperation in the darkness that compels us to position ourselves to hear God’s voice, even if that means climbing a mountain.

He came close and He met me night after night and He spoke truth and yeah, I might have missed out on so much joy now if it weren’t for Him. And I definitely would have missed out on joy then.

The pastor said it…how life is full of mountain-top experiences and it’s full of valleys, but how God gives us the mountain-top experiences to help sustain us through the valleys. And it’s true. I’m grateful for this mountain-top experience, which is just an example of God’s faithfulness…of His desire to always sustain me to the other side of the darkness where He has joy planned.

The journey will be more pleasant, and even if the hard doesn’t end here, I know that on the other side of eternity, all of us who are living obediently to God’s will and abiding in Him will have our George Bailey moment with Jesus. 

Footnote: My advice for those battling through a valley right now? Read One-Thousand Gifts and The Broken Way by Ann Voskamp.

“The joy of the Lord is my strength” “In His presence is fullness of joy”

Fear and freedom

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Here’s the truth about me.

I am afraid of all sorts of things.

When Boyfriend asked me on my birthday eve how I wanted to grow during the last year in my 20s, I stared at the blades of grass thinking for a minute.

“I want to stop being so fearful and imagining the worst-case scenario all the time.”

I had debated for a second whether to be so…truthful…when I could pick something more admirable. But it’s the truth.

I’m not afraid of bugs, intervening in dangerous situations, medical emergencies, giving presentations, or jumping off of cliffs,

but in 24 hours, I can fear having children, not being able to have children, a difficult marriage, being difficult to be married to, children turning their backs on God and death or profound disability of a husband or child. Did I mention that’s just in twenty-four hours?

Being single can suddenly start to feel safe relative to all the pain that loving can hold. I want to take back my surrender of “anything” and make it “anything but that, God” again.

Anything but working to the bone for years because I have a child with a disability or severe mental illness. Anything but infertility for decades. Anything but my husband dying and leaving me with young kids and day-care expenses and having to work two jobs. Anything but the pain of watching my child not love you and live a life rejecting you. Anything but living out my life in grief.

But when I look at why I’m afraid, I realize that no fear is really rooted in the circumstance.

All fear is really rooted in the fear that God won’t be enough.

Fear that it would break me, break my faith, break my hope, break my joy. Fear that I’d have to endure a long life of pain before the promised eternal joy, and I’m still a little shell-shocked from the past year. I don’t want to go back into battle. Send someone else to the front lines. I don’t want to have to fight powers and principalities to be joyful and happy again.

And I wonder it when I see pictures of his old girlfriend on Facebook and it takes the breath out of my lungs. I wonder why I doubt his words and assurance. Why do I fear what he tells me I have no reason to fear? Maybe I fear because I doubt that I’m really loved.

Suddenly, I’m not just talking about my boyfriend anymore.

And maybe I’ve been living out of “I love God.” 

Maybe I need to learn how to live out of “God loves me.” 

Oh, I know He loves me, but do I know how deep? If I don’t, can I learn? And as I do, can I beat back fear by remembering that I’m really loved?

Maybe just like I beat back brokenness by counting gifts

I am supposed to beat back fear by recounting truths

starting with the truth of His love for a daughter named Joyce.

He loves me. He loves my (awesome, and don’t worry, Christ-like) boyfriend. He loves my parents. He loves my brother. He loves any future-children.

One of my greatest prayers lately is to help me stay focused on Him when it’d be easy to be distracted or become complacent because I’m happy and falling in love. God has given me a recurrent image. I ask Him to help, and I sweep my arms apart. All people, things, and stresses are parted. There’s an aisle created, and all the worldly stuff is held at bay and becomes unimportant. There, at the end of the aisle, is Jesus. When I get to have my eyes on Him like that, it feels like nothing can separate us. There’s an aisle for me to  receive His joy because I can see Him. It makes me want to take steps towards Him.

 

I was sitting in that tonight when a surprise-prayer came out “Lord, I don’t know what the future holds, but if you’re in it, that’s good enough for me.”

It’s not the end of fear by any means, but it’s the start of some good steps through it.

A Jesus-lover’s soul survival guide to joy

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I beat back the darkness with counting gifts. I hacked my path through brokenness by remembering the goodness of God as I walked the half-mile path around my neighborhood through the winter. Praying. Wondering why eternity felt so far away. When the wounds of the whole world felt like a ripping, it was thanking God stitched me back together.

In my aloneness last year, I learned “you alone.”

You alone fulfill me. You alone comfort me. You alone give me strength. You alone give me joy. You alone are good. You alone are any good in me. Your presence alone is joy. You alone take me through the long nights of chest pain and fluttering beats.

I wrote plenty about it. The depth of the joy I felt and the depth of brokenness that I felt. I needed God every day. Every night. I needed His presence.

God has gradually repaired my joy the last 7 months in many significant steps. Now my days are full of joy. I’ve tossed around in my mind lately how not to lose God in it. How to still know my need for God in my joy.

Here’s what God has been teaching me.

-In good times, counting gifts is even more important because it keeps me focused on the giver. It reminds me that every. single. good and gracious gift is from above.

-In good times, I know my need by knowing my sin. Don’t stop knowing and repenting.

-In good times, have the extra dose of strength to pray for the brokenness that others are experiencing.

-When God talks about the feast, he’s not talking about abundance or joyful emotion or comfort in this world. He’s talking about the blood and I still need the blood in my joy. That’s the seat at the table. That’s the joy.  The feast is all about the body and blood, not the side-dishes. I need to not let the taste of the side-dishes distract me from the real feast.

-The joy of His presence is still my strength. Soak in His presence daily. Thank Him for joy.

-The joy gives me a greater margin of emotional energy to serve. There was that hard thing that I didn’t have the emotional reserves for. God has been prompting me to consider that now is the time. That there’s a purpose for joy, just like there was with pain. Now’s the time to take the land. He wants me to take the land with my pen. With my obedience…To know my need for Him in this new way.

I’m sure more lessons will come, but I’m grateful for this start.

 

Repairing joy in my giftings

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Yeah, this Sunday, I interacted with a boatload of kids from 1-13 years-old…and I felt joy? I felt energized? Not a shred of resentment or after-pain?

And when two people reached out and told me that my words mattered. That my words were God’s timing and God’s confirmation, and I felt gratitude to be used where I’d recently felt happy for them, but nothing in my joy.

A woman told me that she leads a Bible study with college girls and that she wants to hear my spoken word poems. The girls, she said, were talking about how powerful it was at Bible Study. After performing it, I had felt glad that I had been obedient, but I also felt empty walking into the night. And it had been hard and not really “fun” to write.

I’ve found joy in many things the past few months…from God’s presence to my co-workers to God’s provision. But, aside from finding joy in my job, I have not found joy in my giftings in a long time.

Since my breaking heart, I’ve enjoyed reaching out to girls again. I’ve enjoyed talking. I’ve enjoyed making people laugh. I’ve enjoyed writing a spoken word on my heart. I’ve loved children.

And it comes as a mirthful laugh when I realize it…that God is fixing my joy in my giftings. He’s giving me joy in them again. Could it be that repentance precedes the miracle? Hadn’t I said it out loud? Was that really all He had wanted?

Lord, I repent of resenting you for the way you made me. I repent of telling you a little freshly to your face that you created me wrong. That I wanted to exchange the personality traits and gifts that you gave me for some that seemed more valuable. Thank you for being patient with a slow learner who is quick to forget that it’s always worth being a part of your story, and your glory is always worth my discomfort. (Do you know that the night before I shared this word, I was in tears saying this section, because it was true all over again?)

 Lord, I repent of not believing that you are capable of repairing my joy. I repent of living captive to fear that circumstance or situation or tender-heartedness may break it, and that you will not be capable of fixing it. Forgive me for not trusting your love and your pursuit, which will follow me all the days of my life

 

Oh yes, I still feel Big Feelings at times…but the waves are a whole lot smaller and a whole lot farther apart, for no other reason than Jesus. I marvel in the ways He can heal in a heartbeat.

If they choose to scar me. If He chooses to scar me…

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I wrote it to him. How we’ll know more in May, but in order to heal me, we might need to burn me. We might need to burn my heart, to be exact. They think there are too many signals coming from all over, and not just the sinus node. That’s the node considered the pacemaker of the heart.

So they take these catheters and insert them through a vein, and they travel right to the core of me. And they use them to scar me, because the scar tissue blocks input from the wrong channels that are causing the heart to contract. The scar tissue allows the right impulse to control the heart. Right now, my heart responds to impulses that damage it. That could damage me.

And writing it down made me wonder how many times God uses scars in the same way. Yeah, does He allow scars so that we learn how to follow his impulses, and not our own? So that we learn what His are, and stop fibrillating to the sound of a thousand voices that are overpowering His? Does He allow scars from relationships so we learn to block what’s not healthy for us? Does he burn us with poverty, with drugs, with power, with money, with sex so we learn that they’re not enough to fill us. So that we learn that He is? Are there a thousand ways that He uses scar tissue to bring us closer to His perfectly beating rhythm?

Yeah, surrendering and signing informed consent for something like that can be scary, but it can kill you if you don’t. It might not happen right away, but follow those crazy impulses, and you’ll find yourself short-of-breath with a pulmonary embolism or brain deranged by stroke. You’ll find yourself in heart failure.

So maybe, we say Yes, God. I’ll sign the dotted line. I will trust that you’ll only build scar tissue for Good, because that’s what you always say you’ll do. No scar is given that doesn’t have the potential to heal someone else, if only by showing your own and saying “I know. I understand.”

That’s what God is teaching me, whether or not I need the ablation.

Also, would you believe I feel joy and strength and fierceness and quirky personality returning? I feel like the Me that used to be again. The Me that I wasn’t sure would ever be again. Praise. Praise. Praise God for repairing my joy through the brokenness of my heart.

Obedience

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What if the joy doesn’t depend on success or failure, but obedience?

What if my self-assessment of purpose and self-esteem doesn’t rise or fall with the response of men and women but obedience to God? If I hear God call and I respond, does anything else really matter?

I waffle back and forth between wanting to hear God say “Good job, good and faithful servant” and being terrified of using any gifts that might receive recognition. And fearful that sharing an original baby won’t mean as much for other people as it means to me. Fearful that I don’t actually have a shred of talent, and fearful that I do. It’s possible to be deeply afraid of pride and deeply insecure at the same time. It’s possible to wonder if fear is from the devil or from weakness of a word.

I am fixing my eyes on Jesus. I am leaning into joy coming from being obedient to God, not the outcome. I am asking that God works through not just one or two people but through us all. I am asking that my self-esteem is based on His criteria of me, and not others’.

Because isn’t it funny how God has completely different criteria.

Sometimes stepping out of the boat can look small to an onlooker, but vulnerability is never easy. Opening yourself up to criticism (or praise) or judgement is never easy. BUT God is cheering for those of us taking little steps and big steps.

If I fix my eyes and remember that none of it is because of me anyways,

If I don’t believe the lie that I can do anything but just yield to God doing everything because there’s nothing good that I can do without him…then the lie breaks and the truth of the Spirit will get the honor in my life that it deserves.

I am looking Jesus in the eye and asking Him for humility in dreaming big things. I am asking that I just be a conduit. I am asking that I just be a tool to Him to reveal himself to others, instead of trying to make Him a tool to fit my agenda. Because He is worthy of ALL the honor, all the glory, all the praise for creativity, in Jesus’ name I pray.