Day 2
Author:
November 06, 2018
I understand that the Bible says in Psalm 30 that “joy comes with the morning.” In my case, joy comes with the mourning. Have you ever lost someone important to you or watched a dream die right before your eyes? During these times, we find out what our faith is really comprised of. If faith is defined as complete trust or confidence in someone or something,
how will we know the strength of the relationship unless it’s tested?
If anyone has been in a relationship for any length of time, they would probably agree that at some point, they hit a patch of tension. Whether it was because they had a disagreement or one of them felt unfairly treated, any relationship with any depth will eventually come into a testing season that causes tension.
I have been living in the tension for eight years. For eight years I have prayed for a baby to be conceived. Countless nights of crying and laboring over this dream to start our family. Then it snapped! Losing my dream became reality when my nurse called to tell me the results of my last treatment. It had not worked, again, and the doctor didn't think that it was worth trying anymore. The tension between me, my faith, and God had reached its most stressed point.
If you know anything about grief, it comes in like a tidal wave taking anything and everything with it. After the initial waters hit, the tide begins to recede, and you are left to pick up the pieces of your new reality. You begin to mourn what has been lost. Mourning takes our internal grief and externalizes it in the form of an action. "Grief gone public." I had a decision to make. Let in God and those who love me, or shut them all out. At first it was the latter. I pent up my grief until there was no more room for other things to exist in me. I was completely consumed with disappointment, shame, confusion and a lack of trust. Where was this 1 Peter 1:8 “inexpressible and glorious joy” that I have read about?
More than ever, I was going to have to fight my flesh, push my present reality to the side, and fight to find my faith and joy again. When testing comes, we have to replace the lie with truth. This can be exhausting when your mind is going in a million directions and it feel like you’re being beat from every angle. After some very honest words with God, I knew I had to get back in the Word and start applying it until His truth became real once more.
I love Romans 5:3-5. “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” When I read that passage, it felt like a huge burden was lifted and I was given some God-sized perspective on my circumstance.
Joy is different than happiness. If you have true joy, it doesn't flee at the happenings of life. Joy is the person of Jesus. We get to decide if we are going to hate on our happenings or if we are going to choose to get up in the morning and sing a song of praise to the One who never leaves us. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. When we are truly connected to Him and are spending time in His precious presence, we are able to have joy, even when everything around us should be causing us sadness.
Joy comes in the mourning.
Though I mourn a different loss, I don't think the process is much different from the disciples in John 16. Jesus was giving them news that He was about to leave them, and they couldn’t understand why. They had just been given hope again, and now their hope was going to leave. But Jesus knew that the One coming after Him was going to bring peace, hope, joy, and comfort to all people. Jesus knew that even though it didn't make sense to the disciples, His plan will always be better. If we stay connected and continue to trust in the source from whom all things were created, we can have what Romans 15:13 promises. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
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