Choosing Joy

Joy is a choice that I can make. The sad truth is that I often don't want to. I don't want to let go of feeling the misery of my present trials and put on what Christ has for me. This time of year often brings back painful memories for me. It is the anniversary of an extremely difficult period of time I went through in my life. Each year I tell myself it won't be so hard this year and each year I am wrong. But last night Pastor Dale was talking about trials and it helped. He was talking about the daily trials that hit all of us and this is more of a life crisis but it got me thinking. To have joy I must choose it. I must decide that coming out of the darkness is a much better choice than staying there. To be a light in the darkness I have to shine. Seems simple enough but it isn't. Life is hard and when I decide to dwell in the bleakness of it all I cannot be an effective Christian or a Kingdom dweller. I may have a place in the Kingdom but I am living as if I am determined not to dwell in that Kingdom until I have to. For me it is often about trying to make sense of the darkness I have gone through even though there is no sense in it. It is about asking what it was about me that made this bad thing happen and then making sure I am punished for it. It is sometimes about feeling that I don't have a right to be joyful. It is about not wanting to let it go. It is good to remember what God takes us through but it is bad to live continually in things that are already past. I am not sure I fully get what I am writing here but since I truly believe that I serve the God who is enough, and I do believe that, I am going to choose joy each time I catch myself sitting in a dark spot. I will give those dark places that I cling to back to Him. I will offer up my wallowing and choose to believe that life and joy are better and that it is okay for me to take them.

Life Struggles

I have been going through a writing drought. It is not so much that I can't write.  It's more that I want my heart and attitude to be pleasing to the Lord before I write. I have been struggling to let go of some things. It is like if I let them go that it means they never happened and that the whole struggle was meaningless. I know that makes very little sense. One of the difficulties of finding the joy of the Lord and being able to let go of past events and sorrows, at least for me, is that I don't want to give up my hurts, sorrows, struggles. I sometimes nurse them, think about how rough its been. In order to receive joy I have to be willing to let go of all of that and get God's perspective. The past couple weeks I have been working on forgiveness. Every time I catch myself nursing a past hurt or offense I have been stopping and forgiving whoever it was that hurt me. If I catch myself reliving a partcularly bad part of my life I have been consciously stopping and thanking God for whatever good He is working through that circumstance. When I find myself discouraged and depressed by what I see is a struggle in my present circumstances I am stopping to thank God for leading me and asking Him to make things clear in His time. When someone in the present is bugging me in the present I stop to pray God's blessing on them and ask God in the moment to help me see them as He does. I really hate it. I really would like to sometimes just wallow in some self pity. I think I've shared before how prone to it I am. It is such a temptation to live in past disappointments. You think it will guard you against future pain but instead you live in constant pain. I can tell you my plan is working. I feel free when I forgive people. I feel joy when I give up a past hurt. I love better when I pray for others. I hope it soon comes naturally to me. I hope that one day I won't desire to feel sorry for myself. Until that happens I will take the steps I can to discipline my way into the joy of the Lord. I should want that joy more than anything. Someday I know that I will.