When Joy Feels Impossible
Weeping days turned to thunderous nights and my heart was both struck and flooded. This was not the first storm of the season. I coached my weakness; “Hold it together Kate. Your family needs you.” But as panic filled my body, my ability to function collapsed and feelings consumed. I could no longer override my nervous system. The rapid, stabbing pain in my chest was like the beat of a drum setting me to a toxic speed. I knew what I had to do. I opened my calendar, canceled my day and made my way to the cemetery.
When I arrived at my tree, my heart sank. Dead branches extended from the trunk. This oak and its plot of earth at the edge of the graveyard had been sacred ground to me for many years. I sighed with relief when glorious shade came into sight. I laid down under the full branches that reached high and commended hope to the others. My eyes followed the limbs from trunk to tip, green leaves spreading wide like open palms in thanksgiving and praise. Their message to me was clear, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, rejoice.” (Phil 4:4, ESV) Like many other seasons in my life, this instruction didn’t feel possible. Why would the Lord ask me to give Him something, when I was so desperate for something from Him? An argument passed between the tree and me. As I looked up at the canopy of branches, living and dying parts, it felt like a mirror, my own reflection staring back. That’s when my tears and words came tumbling-
“Jesus, it’s too much. The pain is too great. Jesus, I need you.”
The heaving started and I knew the eruption of anguish was more than just my own. I shook for my children who sat at home broken and bewildered. I wept for my husband and the ache this season of life was causing him. I let myself name every dying branch that extended from our lives. I wept so hard, I knew, the holy and compassionate One was weeping within me too. I felt His terrific sadness partner with my own. I cried so long and so hard I wondered how I would ever stop. I placed my phone on my chest and selected a song that articulated the depths of my pain. It was a brutal melody of lament, suffering and surrender. It was the same song I listened to three years before when this tree invited me to its shade for the first time. The day I dug a grave just deep enough to bury a ripped corner from my journal with the words…Violet Mae Katherine. Today was no different, just miscarried hopes and dreams.
“I knew from years of grieving that “Lord, here’s my life” was the only raft to carry me to a safe shore”
The space on the ground under the tree was now a tomb and an altar. I knew from years of grieving that “Lord, here’s my life” was the only raft to carry me to a safe shore. I had to lay on the alter and offer all of me to be consumed and saved by all of Him. Slowly as I emptied myself, as I renewed my trust in God, peace arrived. At first it was a break from crying and then it was a white flag waved over me. I suddenly felt like I was bubbling. I stood up and walked out from under my tree. Before I could even think about what I was doing, I found myself spinning in light. I twirled under the rays of The Great I AM. I smiled a smile that never crossed my lips before and laughed in an entirely new way. There is no way to make sense of it but to say that in the same way I cried the tears of Jesus moments before, I now laughed His joy. I danced beside a sea of graves, dying branches and a burning bush in the sky. In the stretch of a moment, everything changed. In the stretch of a moment, I was, joy-full and strong. The leaves waved, worshipped and beckoned once again, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!”
Without fully understanding how, my heart and hands were now open like the leaves, and I rejoiced fully in the grace and goodness of God.
I felt entirely different from thirty minutes before and not a single circumstance in my life had changed. Every grievous thing that led me to the cemetery still lay dead or raging in the world. How could grief be followed so quickly by life? The answer came swift. A new wave of joy and gratitude engulfed me and I folded my outstretched arms in to wrap around myself, to tighten around the resurrected God who lived inside. The indwelling Savior who is Himself, joy. The One who endured the cross for one reason, the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2). That joy is not only the moment of my salvation, but every moment of resurrection in my life since. Jesus was the first one to rise from the ground with joy as strength. Have you ever wondered over His joy the moment breath filled His lungs and power surged through His veins? Can you imagine the grave clothes falling from His face and the smile which was revealed. What had been planned before the beginning of time with Father, Son and Spirit, had just been accomplished in the one and only miraculous way it could. I would say a celebration we can barely begin to fathom shook heaven wide open, and Jesus exulted in every firework of reconciliation joy bursting all around. Can you imagine Jesus, crouching down, laughing, extending His arms to permanently receive you? This is His joy and He desires for us to know it as a force of power in every crushing season of our lives.
There is a very strong temptation to blame the One who allows the dying branches in our lives. Isn’t He the God who withheld His sun and His light? How easily we forget that our enemy is on a rampage to steal, kill, destroy, and to sever our trust in the perfect love of our Father. The command to rejoice, is the compassion of Jesus inviting our suffering and weakness onto the ramp that leads to the strengthening power of joy. When nothing in our lives seems fair or good, we can always remember and rejoice at what Jesus has done, is doing and will do for us.
Friend, as you breathe fast and weep hard in the cemeteries of your life, please know, Jesus endured the curse of death because of the JOY of being your Father, most intimate friend and Redeemer. We can know that same joy as we hold fast and rejoice in the truth that we are His beloved! The command to rejoice in our suffering is in fact a compassionate response to our pain. In praise, we open our grieving hearts to be flooded by the glory of God. The enemy would have us believe that the presence of pain means He is against us, when in fact, He lived the worst pain because He is for us! I invite you today to rest in the intimate embrace of God as He holds you secure in the fiercest storm. There Will Be Joy!
