Eventually, I’ll get to where I write more than once a month! Life is crazy and busy as usual, Covid or not.
This is the time of year where we usually focus on being grateful and gratitude. Recently, I’ve found myself in a place of gratitude because of really hard things. I’ve written before about the death of my ex-boyfriend when I was a freshman in college and how that forever changed my life. It’s been 21 years so the date is not so hard as it used to be. I can remember looking at the calendar two months in advance and absolutely dreading Sept. 28. This year, however, was different- really different. I was talking about it with a counselor (counseling is a wonderful thing, even for the professional!) and how difficult the season that followed was. In one moment, everything that I hoped and dreamed for came crashing down and I found myself sitting in a pile of broken dreams. As we were talking about it and how it impacted and shaped my life, I was hit with this huge wave of gratitude and joy. Gratitude because of how God used the most painful and most defining moment of life to bring me closer to Him. I became a believer at 14 but my faith truly didn’t become real until I was in college and had to truly rely on the Lord for everything. Gratitude because I had a husband who truly is everything that I prayed for and more, gratitude because I was a mom, gratitude because I was truly living the life that I prayed for so long- I can’t tell you how many tear filled nights and prayers were prayed for those two things! The joy that came despite the hard times was a true joy that was rooted in gratitude.
I Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NIV) says “Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” There are three commands (and not suggestions!) here:
Be Joyful always- find joy, gladness and delight constantly
Pray continually- always, not stopping
Give thanks in all circumstances- This one is a tough one and much easier said than done. It’s easy to be thankful when things are good, going the way we planned, without problems. However, this also means being thankful for the hard times- the really hard times. The hard times that leave you face planted before the Lord because that’s all that you know to do.
I’m not going to go into a long explanation of suffering- that’s for another post! There is suffering because we live in a fallen and broken world. It is God’s desire for us to be rooted in Him, to be joyful, to never stop praying, to be thankful because sometimes hard things happen. These hard things push us and force us to be joyful when we want to be the complete opposite. God longs for us to press harder, push deeper into Jesus- the source of our true Joy.