Joy Amidst Sorrow

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. –Romans 12:12

Since I haven’t posted in nearly three months and since my last post was my dad’s obituary, you may all be thinking I’m must be down in the dumps. In some ways I am. But in most ways I’m not. As the pictures on the following post will show, life forges ahead with its joys even amidst, and sometimes because of, sorrows. "Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she [Sorrow] may not enter" (George MacDonald, Phantastes). Sorrow opens the door to joy. This is not to say that joy explains sorrow or evil, but God, in his goodness, can turn even the deepest pain into something good. Here’s how I’ve been experiencing this truth in my life:

1.) I have never felt so close to my family as I do right now. We need each other. We think of each other. We are helping one another.

2.) I am coming to understand brokenness and feel that this understanding helps me to see it in others. It is helping me to learn how to love and comfort others who are hurting.

3.) The Bible talks about how we “participate in the suffering of Christ” and that we are to “take up our cross and follow him.” I’ve never understood these verses. But now I realize that in my suffering (which is miniscule in comparison to what Christ suffered), I have communion with God. He stooped to earth and suffered an ignominious, excruciating death and all so that we might be with God after our deaths. He knows our pain, and we know him more deeply through our own pain.

4.) I generally have a different outlook on life.
a. I realize my days are numbered: “Teach us to number my days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). It has caused me to savor things like the vibrant colors of the autumn leaves, my son’s bubbling laughter, a good book (currently it’s Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry), and a warm embrace from my husband. And yet while I savor this all, I have a yearning for my true Home where this enjoyment will not be mingled with sorrow.
b. For some reason something inside of me (and I think most of us) believed that I deserved to be happy and have an easy life. I wish I could say that I could blame it on watching too many Disney movies as a kid, but I think it’s innate. Whenever I would complain about something being “unfair,” my father (like so many fathers) would quip: “Life’s not fair, Jessica.” His death more than anything he ever said to me has taught me this. I have come to believe that my life isn’t fair, but not in the way my father meant. Here’s how my life isn’t “fair:” I don’t deserve any of the good things that the Lord has given me. I don’t deserve my husband, my child, my house, not even the next breath that I am about to take. They are gifts granted by a benevolent God to a selfish, greedy, prideful, conniving woman (who, in our most honest and lucid moments, can say that we are otherwise?). So when I fall and scrape my knee or my house burns down or I break my cell phone or worse—this is what I deserve. And above all, my sinful heart and self deserve the eternal fires of hell, but instead, God came near through his Son and so I have hope that one day I will be without blemish and in His Presence.

5.) My dependence on God has deepened, and I’m more aware of my need. You see, I’ve always been dependent on God, but more often than not I fooled myself to think it was with my own strength that I lived and worked. Now I run aground much more often. Right after my dad died, I started a new job (online teaching) and Ryan started working overtime. Like a tree in a strong winter wind, I felt bare. On my own strength, I could not have handled it all. But loved ones helped out, and I felt God granting me the stamina to carry the load. These verses (along with many, many others) have meant much to me: “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you” (Isaiah 26:4).

In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. –Jesus, speaking to his disciples (John 16:33)