For the joy-less

I went to a women's conference a couple years ago and I remember the speaker having us chant the mantra that we will choose joy...and to go forth.  After I left and I was digesting these words with all my friends in the car, something felt funny, and wasn't right.  How do you just choose joy?  Like you're ordering a big mac, or an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top.  My friend confided in me that she had been in a deep depression and couldn't just get out of it.  How do you get out of it?  That slump.  That deep dark hole when the circumstances for sure, aren't changing.  I started thinking, pondering about my own life. 

I have struggled with deep deep depression, to the point of having to be picked up off my bed, packed up, and carried home by my mother. I slept nights with music playing and I slept the day away wishing it were night.  I came out of my room to eat fruit, maybe. 

I have experienced heartbreak like no other, having a relationship for many many years and having to let go of him...forever.  I felt like I would be ripped in half or my heart would literally fall out of its chest.  It scarred me so deeply that I still think about it and dream about it to this day....15 years later.

I cried tears of pain as I watched my friend's 3 year old girl laugh and chase  my 4 year old boy around the cupcake store, mourning the loss of what would never be between my son and my disabled daughter, and also between my friend's daughter and my own daughter who were previously and subconsciously labeled "best friends" in the womb. 

I was going through a near nervous breakdown when I was 6 months pregnant with my third child.  My back was thrown out and I couldn't lift June anymore.  The entire contents of my kitchen was strewn about my house as they zipped up my kitchen, and labeled it a toxic wasteland.  We were also in financial crisis.  Our renter hadn't paid us in 10 months.  My sweet sister came and got my kids from me for two weeks.  I felt like I was giving them up for adoption. 

I have hated my own husband to the point of wishing we had never gotten married.  It was all a big mistake.  I cried myself to sleep with my Bible open on my chest hoping that somehow God's word would get through to my inner core.

But somehow I was supposed to choose joy in these circumstances.  Christians had been chanting it for years, since I was a child.  Well, through this process of grieving losses, trying to forget what could've beens and managing my own seratonin levels, I figured out something.

Joy chose me.  It was a gift.

In all those instances where I was able to walk away with joy in my heart, there were deep deep moments of grieving.  Some events were years, others were days, but the thing that kept me going was not that I had chosen joy, but rather I had put my hope in a God who would grant peace for the moment and for sure someday lift me up out of the dark, slimy pit. The only choosing I did was to not put my hope in the unhappy situation changing. 

And God has been faithful every single time.
He gives JOY, not necessarily immediately, but ultimately.

"Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up.  You will increase my honor and comfort me once again." Psalm 71:20-21

"Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning." Psalm 30:5b



And it washes over us unexpectedly.