Faithful Paradox

I had coffee recently with a friend who is battling through faith. They have faced some significant loss and are wondering if holding on to God is worth it. They feel like He didn’t show up; or at least not in the way they hoped he would. I imagine most who believe in God have felt this same thing at one point or another.

As my friend talked, I was praying, “God, how do I respond? In many ways, I feel the same. I don’t know what to say.” As I began to respond, the only thing that came to mind was that I am, in many ways, stubborn. I am stubborn enough to hold on to God right now because I want to see the good that he has for me in my own pain. He has promised he will bring good for those who love him. If I were to let go, even for a spell, might I miss the good that God has for me as I wrestle through my own pain, confusion, grief, disappointment and loss? I don’t want that. I want to hold God to the promise he made to bring good (not that I need to hold him to it – he will never lie to me).

As I wrestle with my own grief and often have opportunity to talk with others in their grief these days, the idea of joy comes up often. I recently had someone ask me, “what does it look like to fight for joy when you don’t feel anything other than grief?”

In Christian circles, we often hear about the difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is based on our circumstances and can come and go. Joy is a choice.

If I’m being honest, I’ve always hated it when people tell me to “choose joy,” because it feels like a condescending placation. It feels like they are discounting my pain and the things I wrestle with. It feels like the expectation is to shove aside sorrow and just choose to be happy. It feels like an insincere overlooking of pain. It feels like it’s not okay to struggle and wrestle with the fact that this world is not okay; things are not as they should be.

Surely, there has to be something more to understanding joy. Surely, joy and sorrow must be able to co-exist.

As I wrestle with what joy is, I needed to come to a definition of joy. It must be a definition that is far different than anything based on feelings, something that allows space to feel grief, sadness, anger and every other emotion, and also something that helps me understand what joy actually is. I needed to come to an understanding of joy that makes space for both the grief and sadness I feel and also holds out hope that it will not always be this way.

As I sat with my coffee and Bible on the couch this morning, pondering joy, the idea I wrote down about joy is:

Joy is a conscious and intentional, oftentimes daily, decision about how I am going to live, not because of, but despite the things that have come into my life.

It’s a conscious decision. It’s a choice I make, sometimes one decision at a a time. It’s choosing to believe that today, God has good for me – not despite my hardship but in the hardship he has allowed. It’s choosing today to fight for hope. It’s showing up for my family, even when my heart is feeling heavy and broken. Sometimes it’s simply doing the next thing. It’s finding delight in the small things of today like cooler weather, birds chirping and morning coffee. It’s fighting to be grateful for memories, even if right now they feel more painful than good. It’s fighting to believe that God will provide in places and spaces I cannot imagine how it will happen. It’s gratitude that God has caused me to endure thus far, and believing he will continue to do so until one day, everything will be made right.

And even as I ponder and dwell on these things, I am still deeply sad. I am grieving the loss of my son today. Today is a day full of memories that feel heavy and full of sorrow.

I think we are often quick to tell someone to choose joy because they come across as a “Debbie downer” or have a hard time seeing hope or good. How often do we exhort someone to choose joy because we are irritated by their negativity, discounting the grief they must be wrestling through?

Could it be that joy and sadness can co-exist? Can we both choose joy and also hold grief? I think we can. I think true joy is fighting to believe what is true, even when it’s hard to believe. True joy holds space for both fighting for belief and feeling sad that things are not as they should be. True joy will not necessarily feel at all like happiness. It is clinging to the promises of God with every fiber of my being, waiting to see what will come, even as things continue to feel hard and sad and broken.

For one who feels things deeply, for one who is struggling with grief and sadness, for one who struggles with depression and anxiety, joy requires stubbornness. It requires one to stubbornly hold on to the promises of God, even when we cannot imagine how they will come true. It’s refusing to let go until we see God’s purpose in our pain. And that may not come until we meet Jesus face to face. But somehow, it’s choosing to keep living, one day, one step, one choice at a time. I think true joy may not look at all like happiness, but rather, I think it may look more like faithfulness.