{Be Real} The Path to Joy

I’ll never forget that afternoon.  The smell of the Thai food, the chill of the winter air outside and the warmth of being inside, the way my friends eyes pooled as they looked at me, deeply sorrowful and joyful. I saw something so deep and beautiful in those eyes.

My friend Una grew up in a poor village in Botswana, and now, is following the Lord’s call to start a children’s hospital there as the only doctor in her country trained in critical care.  Starting a hospital was always her dream, but her path was catapulted when her mom died 2 years ago and her world shattered.  We spent a lot of time talking about pain and joy as I ate pad thai.

And suddenly, I had an a ha moment. I stared off in the distance.

“Deep joy…is always nested in deep pain.”

I looked at the way my friends eyes lit up, and I thought of all the truly joyful people I knew.  Every single one of them had a story of pain they lived through, that formed and re-formed their joy.

And in my own life, I knew this was true.  It was only after I went through a season of depression and anxiety in college, that I formed joy for myself, real and true, a joy that has grown deep roots in my heart.  It was only after going through a season where there was literally no light in my eyes that I truly began to see.

Ann Voskamp wrote, “the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.”

Joy, unlike happiness, is a deep current of hope that ebbs and flows and when we least expect it, bubbles to the surface.

We form joy by going into the depths of suffering and discovering, almost to our surprise, that God is still there.

The problem is, we want joy but we don’t want to suffer.  We want to be spared painful seasons and loss.

But we were created to feel pain. My friend Una told me that children born without sensors to physical pain die quickly. The neurons that transmit the signal to our brain to feel pain are an alarm, a reaction intended to awaken us to danger, or something we need to pay attention to. If you’ve ever touched a hot stove as a child, you know how the reaction “ouch” spares you a deeper or enduring pain that keeping your hand on the burner would cause.

Although we can agree we need to feel physical pain, emotional pain is harder to grapple with. It is only in the context of working for a weight of glory, that we can discover the purpose to our pain, and see the deeper joy that it works in us.

I heard this a few years ago: “Pain and joy are arteries of the same heart.”  They truly are.  And as Brené Brown aptly says, we can’t numb our pain without numbing our joy, too.  It’s so true. To accept joy is to accept pain, and there is no path in life more vulnerable than living wholeheartedly.

When you feel like shying away from pain and joy, as we all do at times, just look at the cross.  Jesus wanted to be spared pain and suffering too, He pleaded with God and asked Him if there was any other way.  But after all of His grappling, He lifted His spirit to heaven and said, “Father, if it is your will, take this cup away from me; nevertheless not My will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)  He surrendered to the process and to the cross. And Jesus,

“for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
(Hebrews 12:2)

I wish I could tell you girls, that I suffer gracefully.  I don’t.  I fight it and I kick and scream.  I turn away.  I try to perfect myself before I surrender.  It’s taken those seasons of everything crashing in for me to surrender to pain, and literally be broken open to joy that follows.

If you’re in a season of pain right now, sister, know that there IS a joy set before you.  A joy that will be formed by you seeing Jesus right there.  Working in the darkness, in the areas you can’t even imagine.  He’s never left you.  Know you don’t need to “put on” happiness, when you can instead form joy.

The beautiful thing is, the hands that work on you will work on you gracefully through all your suffering.  And these strong, scarred, perfect hands of our Creator are forming a joy in you that will never die, a joy that will tie your heart forever unto His.

Keep enduring, keep abiding in His love. Through the path of suffering, joy, dear sister, will be yours.

 

“Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.”

-Psalm 126:5 (NIV)