Month: April 2023

Don’t Settle For Peace – Press On To Joy

[Originally written 4/15/12 but there’s a substantial update in this posting. In the last decade I’ve moved more comfortably into joy and what that looks like in me.]

To be deeply peaceful – no matter what the circumstances – is something I’ve learned in the last decade or so.  When I first wrote this, I was coming out of the most painful season of my life. The Lord had worked on the level of fear in my life, I’d been through excruciating grief, I’d wrestled with whether I was lovable.  There had been a lot – and recognizing that I can have deep and abiding and sustaining peace in the midst of those things was one of the gifts of that journey.  There can be a solid peacefulness that co-exists with intense pain.

Peace came pretty naturally to me in those days – and is still a solid pillar in my life now.  When something challenges it, I know the steps to regain it.  It takes more than it used to to disturb the peacefulness I feel, and when it does get disturbed it’s not the same struggle to get back there.  Jesus promised us that His peace is different from the world’s peace – and I’ve experienced that.

But I was once challenged to not settle just for peace, but to press on to joy.   This was earlier in my journey and the advice giver acknowledged that after a long season of pain and anguish, he knew that arriving at a place of peace felt really good.  But he encouraged me to press on until I reached joy.  For the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross.  (Heb. 12:2)

But what does joy look like in me?  Ten years ago, here is what I felt: Despite huge amounts of breaking free from it, I’m still shy in most settings.  I don’t have the bubbly personality where joy spills over infectiously.  I’m quieter by nature.  I don’t spontaneously blurt out the things that indicate joy.  Shyness creates unique challenges in this area.  The fear of embarrassment is still a struggle for me.  It seems as if peacefulness suits my personality better than joy does.

But I had a nagging sense that the Lord had more for me.

It’s not that joy was not present.  I did think I had pressed past peace and into joy.  It’s that I didn’t know how to make it visible.  I often think that if I could change one thing about myself, it most likely would be this.  I’d like to be more expressive to those around me – especially in the things that indicate joy and delight.  But there I was, still quiet and shy about it.  

A few days before writing this ten years ago, something caused a blip in my peacefulness and my joy.  It hurt and it was unfair and I spent one evening doing a little bit of grieving.  I brought a handful of people alongside me.  The peace began to flow back in.

And I realized this at that point – the reminder to press on to joy was coming more automatically those days.  It had become an integral extension of peace.  Whether or not I would ever be able to express it in a way that others could see, I did know that the joy of the Lord is my strength. 

In the decade since then, I have learned to be more comfortable with a quiet joy. My shyness is still there, but not as controlling. I still have times when I wish I could be “the fun one”. But I also am very comfortable with who I am.

I still think I live more comfortably in “peace,” but “joy” is also a fruit of the Spirit and I want my life to be characterized by it as well. The Lord has stretched me in the last decade – and I am bit by bit relaxing into it in new ways.

What I Know For Sure

[Originally published 4/1/12. Still true for me today.]

Oprah often asks her guests – in her TV interviews and in her magazine – this question:  “What do you know for sure?”

Of the many ways I could answer that, here is one that remains constant.  I know for sure that Jesus understands a woman’s heart.

It started out being “I know that Jesus understands us.”  A Palm Sunday sermon when I was in my 30s took that truth from a head knowledge to a more powerful heart connection.   The gist of the sermon was that Jesus, during His time on earth, and especially during the events of Holy Week, knew what it felt like to be lonely, to be misunderstood, to have the “system” (both religious and legal) that was supposed to protect people turn against Him, to have friends break promises, betray Him and not be there for Him.  The list could go on and on. 

The point is – it hit me in a new and powerful way that I was not only forgiven, I was understood.  My specifics might not line up with what Jesus experienced, but the comfort of knowing that my emotions were understood became real.

Fast forward a lot of years and I found myself struggling to breathe (metaphorically) because the pain of a marriage that ended was so great, the betrayal so agonizing.  In reality, it had been coming for a long time but those early weeks and months after the separation took the pain to a new level.  

I found myself reading the gospels and becoming acutely aware of Jesus’ encounters with women.  There’s the woman who anointed His feet, the woman at the well, the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, mothers whose children died, women who needed physical or spiritual healing, and the list goes on.  Luke even specifically refers to the women who financially supported Jesus’ ministry out of their own means, giving them names – not just referring to them as someone’s wife. 

I was a broken-hearted woman reading these stories, someone whose core identity as a wife and a woman had been trampled on.  And here’s what I saw – a lot of little details that brought hope to my heart:  Jesus looked into their eyes, He praised them in front of the crowd and He took specific steps to restore them to community (i.e., to alleviate their shame and their isolation).  He acknowledged and received their faith and their love – and treated both of those as precious gifts.   I have journal pages full of the emotions connected to the understanding and comfort that were embedded in those encounters.

The non-stop intensity of the agony passed, the healing began, I could breathe again, do what I needed to do and even thrive.  And I knew this for sure:  Jesus understands a woman’s heart.

Saying No … to the right things

[This was originally published on 3/26/12 and still resonates with me. For those of us who are “doers”, who are wired to meet needs, it’s hard to say “no” – even when it is the right thing.]

Is it possible that Kingdom work is as much about what we say “No” to as it is about what we say “Yes” to?  This is not headed toward a legalistic, moralistic list of “dos” and “don’ts” related primarily to behavior! It’s also not primarily about saying “no” to harmful, unproductive, or wasteful things.

I believe there are times when we need to say “no” to good things, to unmet needs and to Kingdom work.

There are two stories – almost back to back in the gospel of Luke – that have challenged me for years.  In Luke 4:14-30, Jesus has just finished His testing in the wilderness and He returns home to Nazareth.  He attends the synagogue, reads the Messianic passage from Isaiah 61*, and announces that “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  There’s an exchange with the crowd about no prophet being recognized in his home town and Jesus is driven, by the crowd, out of town to the edge of a hillside where they intend to throw him off the cliff.  “But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.”  (v. 30).

A few verses later (verses 40-44), we find Jesus in Capernaum at the home of Simon.  Beginning when the Sabbath ended at sunset, people brought a steady stream of the sick and demon-possessed to Him and He healed them.  This continues throughout the night until Jesus retreats to a solitary place at daybreak.  The people find Him and try to keep Him from leaving.  “But he said, ‘I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.’” (verse 43).

So where’s the challenge?  For me it comes in several forms. 

In the midst of people who know me, who may not think I can do something, am I willing to hold fast and trust my sense of call?  To not let their perception of me cloud who God says I am?

For me, a deep rejection which is then followed by an adoring crowd, would make the adoring crowd an enticing place to stay.   Do I have the courage – and the sense of call – to move on, not knowing what is ahead in terms of acceptance or rejection?

Can I leave things “undone” or “unfinished” when it is not my role to finish them?  As I read this passage, my assumption is that there were needs Jesus did not meet in Capernaum.  More sick people.  More demon possessed people.  More suffering.  More people to inspire and nurture.  And He walks away from that.  He says “No” – not always an easy thing for us to say in Christian circles where we are inundated with requests to meet needs.  He says “No” to real ministry opportunities in order to be obedient to His greater calling.

 In many ways, this last one is the hardest for me.  It doesn’t feel right to see what needs to be done and then not do it.  How do I keep my eyes on the bigger picture when the little picture is so immediate and so compelling?   

I don’t have a definitive answer.   I know it involves listening to the Holy Spirit, growing in intimacy with the Lord so that I recognize His voice, and asking others to help me discern. I know that there are small “yeses” that I’m not supposed to stress over.

But even after 20 years [now 30 years] of being challenged by this, I’m not always sure I can say that I know what I am sent to do. So, even at this stage of my life, I long for increasing pieces of that knowledge and the vision of what that looks like – as well as occasional reminders that I am created and sent for a purpose. 

*Isaiah 61:1 – The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,  because the LORD has anointed me  to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,  to proclaim freedom for the captives  and release from darkness for the prisoners, to  proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor.