Hmm...there are a million things i should be doing--sleep comes to mind--but my chances at internet are spotty and I feel like writing: so here's the blessing. The rambles of an often crowded mind, not sure of her own existence or its worth. Fighting her way to the top and excellence because she can't let up her own pressure that she puts on herself. Happy...no. Introspective...always, a little too much.
I remember being twelve. That summer when I had a lot to think about and not much to say and my mom's one comment as we drove down the road was, "It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile." She was right--but I hadn't even realized what I was doing--and it takes so much effort to figure the world out--it's just exhausting.
I'm not trying to figure it out anymore, I promise. I gave Jesus my trust--instead of being in control--and that gave me the joy that no one in my family had ever truly experienced (we're a family of depressives) and I was a new breed.
So...I'm not happy these days--but that isn't the condition for joy is it?
Happiness is beautiful but it is dependent on circumstances and doesn't stay. Joy--for me defined by one of my old college professors (don't I sound distinguished saying that!)--is the endless knowing that everything will be all right...that this is not how the world ends and we have so much more to look forward to [I (obviously) expanded the definition...thank you Professor Griffin, for making that distinction between joy and happiness for me--its helped see me through many a rough day.]
Happiness, no. Joy, yes--the joy of knowing the truth of the resurrection and the even greater truth of living out what came before the resurrection every day alongside Him. Of giving up what I wanted, everything i wanted! (oh! the ache!) because to know Him was and always has been far more precious. To look into His eyes and realize that He knows what He is doing with me and this waiting--endless waiting--is all being woven into a beautiful story that never will end. That the joy He imparts is always going to be more full than any cheap substitute the world dangles in my face.
I keep hearing this message of overcoming and how powerful and full of joy our overcoming is. That we wouldn't wish this pain and ache and wondering without answers onto anyone--not even our worst enemies--but the Lord chooses to use the pain and the mess and the uncertainty to refine and refresh and strength us. That we are not what we seem--and the Lord sees the heart: all that it has gone through, all that it has endured and the gold He is creating--and it amazes, it overwhelms Him. (Read the end of Song of Songs--and listen to what Mike Bickle says about it.) And when the end comes, with all our accounts before Him, it won't be a "my, my, my, you could have done better" (Jesus, change the tape in my head! haha) but a "my, my, my look what you overcame."
We stand with Him, we stand for Him in all the worst life has to bring and He finds us beautiful. In our incompleteness, all the ways we don't measure up, He sees the heart behind it and says, "well done. you were one of my kids and you loved me." And that's His favorite, we're His favorite, just being His.
I guess I live for and I'm learning to work for a different joy: His. And that's all.
