A gray joy

Dark gray storming morning. Lying in corpse pose after my first dedicated work out since bed rest. The instructor on my iPhone tells me to focus on my worries and embody them. Seems counterproductive, so I pray moving through the fruits of the spirit. Thank The Lord for his love in our hearts. Ask for peace to be sown in our home.

You missed one.

Pause to recite the verse: the fruit of the spirit is love, joy.

Oh yeah, joy. The little one. That was my mental cue when I was learning the list. Joy was the little word tucked in. Three letters easily missed. Especially on a rainy morning stretched out like a corpse.

Isn't it human how joy can be overlooked in what should be our most joyful seasons? We have a brand new baby. I should be dancing around the house, humming to myself like a scene from Lady and the Tramp.

That's not happening right now.

It's been a very hard year, truth be told. Our assertive bossy one hit the assertive bossy three's. Our emotionally volatile one hit the emotionally volatile two's. We've discovered that personality times developmental stage exponentially exaggerates and elongates the behavior phase. Grr...

Tim and I have been the easiest either. I've been sick and pregnant or recovering and exhausted. Add walking through some difficult, painful issues in our relationship. And saying goodbye to good friends and my grandmother.

I don't mean this to be a gripe list. But in an effort at openness, we're in a long difficult season.

I want to grin and bear it until the next birthdays. Then pray expectantly for an easier year. But the last time I decided I should be done with trials my cousin died and my dad underwent radiation treatment. I don't mention that because I believe God will smite me if I ask for a break. God is not petty.

But 'hanging in there' 1) does not create joy in the present 2) teaches me self-reliance not God-endurance 

And I have no promise that any light at the end of the tunnel is daylight.

But if The Lord is my light, I don't need the sun. Don't need the day. I can walk through the tunnel for the rest of my days and never walk in darkness.

The Christian life is not trial-free but trial-proof. ~~Mark Driscoll

What a depressing, intellectual post on joy. 

Maybe that's why joy is the small one in my estimation.

Why the only "joy" associations I could make during my meditation were a Christmas carol and a verse about suffering.

Maybe this is a huge gap in my everyday that needs some serious prayer and practice. Not a dogmatic self-command, rejoice, damnit, but a new understanding.

Once again I write with no answer.

No answer, yet.

Joy is one of his gifts for all Christians, even the cerebral blogging types.

A Daffodil in the Lawn

One daffodil sprouts through the lawn. I didn't plant it there. It must have put down roots after a squirrel dug it up, took one bite and cast it aside. A very plucky flower. My favorite because it's sharing beauty from the wrong spot.

I'm all wrong to see beauty right now. My heart is heavy. My Bible barely read. My prayers hastily thrown skyward over a chaotic weekend.

God's grace is beauty, shining in unlikely moments. He reminds me that He loves me because I am His, not because I act like His. He answers prayers because I am His, not because I ask correctly.

I bow on my knees before the Father... that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height  and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:15-19

Rooted and ground in love. God's love founds knowledge and filling. His power and peace pour from his love that surpasses knowledge. 

And here is his astonishing answer. Verse 17 {John 7}: "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority." I remember sometime in the fall of 1967 at Wheaton College being shocked when someone brought this to my attention—that right willing is the foundation of right knowing. It seemed at the time to make life more complicated, more mysterious, and certainly less under my control. Less rationalistic. The intellectual task of knowing truth suddenly became a moral task, and a spiritual task. ~~John Piper, "Willing God's Will As A Way of Knowing Christ's Word"

My state of learning and study doesn't matter. Unable to snatch even a few quiet moments to open the Word, yet I am immersed in the truth of God's grace more tangibly than any reading can provide. God has made my heart right willing that my foundation in hardship is right knowing. Grace sprouting in my life from the wrong spot.