Something the Lord has been showing me these past weeks has been His abundant Joy. Over the last year and a half there has been a lot of stuff going on in my life that just robbed me of my Joy. I didn’t even realize it either! I just went through the motions of finishing high school and pulling myself together emotionally enough to get through the weeks.
As the months went on I pushed the pain aside and got it tucked away so it wasn’t in my face every day. I had tried to fully express my heart to the Lord. I had cried out to Him in the hard days and had made the decision to just move on. But, still, if I thought on the losses and the changes that had come into my life, the pain returned and the sadness resurfaced all over again. The pain I had tucked away in the back of my heart was affecting the abundant joy I had always had in the Lord.
But the Lord is bringing me joy again! It is incredible to experience true joy from the Lord. True joy not only my relationship with God, but my relationship with brothers and sisters in Christ! God is breaking down the walls I’ve built up to protect my heart and helping me build new, meaningful, loving relationships. He is taking my sorrow and turning it to gladness.
“Then maidens will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.” Jeremiah 31:13
He is changing my heart and my way of thinking.
I want to share something with you. I wrote this sometime while in my senior year of high school. It was a time when I was really hurting. I remember crying while typing it out. Writing helped me express how I was feeling about the loss of friendships in a season that had been so precious and fruitful ...
“Sometimes I wish we could go back to those magnificent Summer days. When being a free spirit was what our hearts hungered for. When the cold grass under our feet made us feel alive, and we would lay in it while the seeping sun melted into night. That Summer when we would dance through the darkness; the stars would dance with us and the moon would laugh and listen to us as we sang to him, smirking in his giddy way, the way moons always do.
We would cast all our problems to the wind. Good friends and music was all we needed to become who we wanted to be. When a smile changed a disposition and a hug was all that mattered. A flash of lightening took your breath away from the beauty of the authority it spoke. We laughed more then we breathed, we loved more then we ever thought we could.
Summer spoke to us as it dissolved the walls that we built up against each other. The walls fell down and we ran, as fast as we could together. There was a fire in us, and we trusted. We trusted the person running next to us wouldn’t cause us to fall. If we did fall, that friend wouldn’t push us down again, but they would help us up. Summer said, “trust.” Summer said, “Abide in the moment.” Summer told us to hold each others heart strings. Summer said, “These are the best days of your life!” And we believed. All those incredible memories spilled from our minds, and rushed through our veins.
Those were the days before the heartache set in. The days before, you had to drown your thoughts on the shoreline just to try to remember what life was really about because nothing made sense anymore. When Summer came it felt like a dream. It swept you off you’re feet. But a wisp of joy turned into sorrows, a happy thought turned to ruins.
When I look at that dream, the dream of Summer, it wasn’t what it appeared to be. Summer said one thing and did another. Summer lied, and never said it was sorry. Summer left me to a cold world full of ugly truths; it left me lying on the floor with my bleeding heart. And right when I needed Summer the most, when I needed its warmth, its love, when I thought Summer would be on my side, holding my hand, saying the cold would melt away and color will come back… When I needed that, Summer spit on me and told me I was worthless.
All the sweet words it whispered in my ear, saying how, “it could be like this forever,” those weren’t true. Had all the joy been false? Was everything we thought we knew not really what was said?
But I realized something, dreams have to end. You can’t stay asleep forever. If you live in a dream, you're not really living at all. Summer was like a deep slumber. Sometimes when we're in a deep sleep somebody has to shake us awake so that we can be a real, living, breathing person.
If we could go back to that Summer we knew, would we act the same knowing what we know now? In truth, we needed Summer. We needed the Good. Even more so, we needed the bad. Because unless we experience the bad, I don’t think we would even remember how good, Good really was. Unless the ugly, nasty, faulty part of that dream came out into the fresh air, that ugly part would have never choked on the clean, clear, simple goodness that we took for granted. And we would have never known it was hiding anything. We wouldn’t have seen under the skin, under the outer layer that was deceiving us.
I’ve forgiven Summer for the lies it spoke, even though Summer isn’t really sorry.
I’ve come to a place were I’ve accepted it was a dream. A dream that hurt and left scars that will never fully heal…
Would I go back and change summer? Would I have done something different?
No. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t change one moment, one I love you. I cherish those times and still miss them. I still miss the way things used to be…those glorious nights when we lived in our dreams. Nothing will ever be the way it used to, and the reason is because we did trust and it made us trip. But tripping up at times means growing and growing means becoming one step closer to who we were created to be.”
I haven’t shared this with many people. It’s something I’ve held onto…as I feel…in some bitterness still. As I read it now, there is a part where it says” I’ve forgiven”. But at the point that I wrote this I hadn’t forgiven. I wanted to. I wanted to forgive as I have been forgiven…but it never truly came to pass in my heart…until now.
And I don’t miss “the way things used to be” and I don’t desire to “go back.” God has brought me to a new land, where there are sweeter things to taste and more of His goodness to drink in! I am being given an abounding-God-sized-heavenly- joy that only comes from being right where He wants me to be.
I am letting it all go…because I want the JOY of the Lord instead!
(If you just read this whole post… I love you. Sorry it was so long.)
