How To Have Joy When Life Kicks You In The Teeth

I recently read an article on the new "happy people" that treat having joy and happiness as a moral issue. According to this idea, if you're not able to be happy during something hard, you're not doing it right. I believe this to be completely false. Joy isn't about always being happy or feeling awesome when you go through something hard, in fact a lot of times that's just not possible. Joy is more related to having faith and/or hope. Joy is also not quitting when things are burying you.

Life can, at times, totally kick you to the ground. As long as you can find something, anything, to hope for, you're farther along than you think. It doesn't have to be big. It can be something as simple as, "I can't wait to eat that bowl of ice-cream tonight."

I want to talk about an experience I had where I spoke openly in one of my church's sharing meetings about what life had taught me about having faith. Looking back on it now, I can remember how much I felt the love of my dearly-departed mother that day. I had done something big, and I felt her joyful pride showering down on me.

Below is basically what I said in that meeting regarding what I've learned on having faith/hope/joy. I share this, not to dwell on the fact that she died, but to show you that joy exists even when we are buried in hardship. I wasn't happy at this time. In fact, I was broken-hearted, exhausted, depressed, and anxious. But, my heart knew that someday I'd be on the other side of a mountain that I was not even beginning to climb yet. 

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For most of last year, I was battling the whole idea of faith as I knew it, and the struggle was very difficult. I’d always thought faith was believing in the power of God to give you what you want. The last year taught me that it’s believing that if you don’t get what you want, you’ll still be just fine, and will be able to move forward with hope. The hardships won’t kill you, and if they do, you will still be ok. I couldn’t see my mother dying as anything but a happiness killer for me, and I really thought I’d never be ok afterward. 

I just wanted to talk a little bit about what’s happened to me, and to my family,  this past year. My mom was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer in March of 2013, it was a total shock and we felt broadsided. I was so angry when I learned that the average lifespan is only 18 months with this diagnosis, and I spent many a day angry with God for doing this to us and her. Shortly after her diagnosis, my friend sent me a talk about faith, that was so appropriate. 

It was about a man who was diagnosed with cancer shortly after marrying in his early twenties. He was given a healing prayer by his religious leader, but before the prayer he was asked, “Do you have the faith to be healed?” He said yes, of course, but then he was asked, “Do you have the faith not to be healed?” After a long pause he said, “Yes.” 

When I read this story, I was so angry at God, and basically everything, because I knew I had to find this type of faith, there was no other way around it. It had to be the faith that all would be well even if my mother died instead of lived. It took me nearly the whole rest of the year to understand how that was even possible. I was so sure that if I accepted that her death was an option, that I’d ruin the cycle of faith for her healing, and seal her fate to death.

In November of 2013, my parents stopped by my house. I learned that if she didn’t have a 2nd surgery, she would be gone by Christmas. She didn’t want to do it and wanted to prepare to meet her God, but my grandpa and stepdad talked her into it. With the second surgery, she was only given an estimate of six more months. Surely by then they’d have found a way to heal her. 

But that six months gave us all such a dose of harsh reality that I couldn’t accept anything but what would actually happen. I found the faith that I had been looking for -- the faith that she could die, and I could live on without my most trusted advisor. I remember saying a prayer to my God that night that whatever happened, we all wouldn’t suffer afterward. To keep this from being the beginning of the breakdown of our family. To not let it destroy all of us. 

Easter weekend in 2014, she passed away. She was 58 years old.  And through all this, I have seen that the faith I had to find for myself is true. You can be ok afterward. I have my moments, days, or weeks of depression, of intense grief, but I have many others of peace and despite the hole in my heart that I can’t seem to get rid of, my days are still sunny. I can still get up and do what I need to do.

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Joy isn't always running through a field of flowers singing your heart out while butterflies land in your hair. Sometimes it's as simple as knowing that one day this pain that you carry will make you into the person you are meant to be. Sometimes it feels as though this new agenda of happy makes those of us who struggle feel like we're just incapable. That's simply not true. The journey to joy is relative to the traveler. Your path may be a 90-degree, vertical, smooth-faced cliff, while another's seems like a sidewalk along a tree-lined street. We all will have our cliffs, and our sidewalks. Don't give up if you're not finding joy as easily as it appears another is. 

So, when you're struggling just remember this simple equation:

YOU + YOUR STRUGGLES + YOUR SUCCESSES = JOY

Sometimes just knowing you made it through the hardest day of your life, so far, is enough to say you're a champion.

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