I have forever struggled with feeling joy.  I can name on one hand the places where I experience joy.  Reading books to my god-daughters before bed is one, and in the arms of my husband is another. Other than that, I have a hard time allowing myself to feel pure, undistracted, feels so good it almost hurts, joy.

I am coming to believe that my expectations of what joy should feel like are incorrect.  In my mind, joy equals energy, unending smiling, and twirling around with another human being.  Everything around me is lost and I am overtaken on a tidal wave of joy.

Somewhere along my life, I have adopted the truth that joy is a feeling.  Though I do think this is partially true, I am also coming to believe that it’s a chosen mindset.

According to the dictionary, joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.  I don’t know about you, but when Scripture tells us to consider it great joy whenever we face trials of many kinds, this definition falls very short.  In the midst of the major traumas of my life, I cannot point to one moment where I found great pleasure or happiness in the  midst of them.

I don’t know if I’ve become too much of a realist, but I have come to expect pain in our lives.  I have been through enough to know that the grass doesn’t always stay green.  When pain does arise, I have learned to thank God for the struggle because I know the sweet fruit that suffering produces.  This knowledge, this mindset is my version of joy.

Maybe there are many kinds of joy, or maybe I am still out in left field trying to name something that would rather remain nameless.

What is joy to you?

This is a repost from something I wrote in June 2010.  The lesson God started teaching me back then, he reminded me of again this weekend.  I have tried to write new words but have come up empty handed.  Why fix something if it isn’t broken.  So here ya go. 

I’m learning a lot these days, friends.  God is honoring the desire to rid my life of unhealthy things (what I affectionately refer to as gluten of the heart and mind).  I have let too many unhealthy things creep into my spirit without question; like the lie that I am my own worst enemy.  I don’t know if it’s my experience in 12-step culture or the years of self-actualization through counseling, but I often state that the first thing to holding me back in any situation, is myself.  Don’t get me wrong, I may be a close second, but I have lost all sense of this prowling lion that Scripture speaks of.

As a child, someone once told me that to write the name of Satan is the ultimate glorification of him.  That by just mentioning his name, we give him power.  I have come to see that this is ridiculously incorrect and perhaps even the greatest manipulation created by Satan himself.  Ignoring our enemy does not weaken him.  In fact, it only gives him more freedom to roam about unhindered.  We live in an age that promotes and praises the glorification of self.  I’ve heard time and time again from beleivers, “I know God extends mercy to you, but it’s hard to realize He extends it to me.”  In forgetting we are in a fight for our lives, we have also forgotten our power.

It’s frightening to think that this war has been raging against me and I have just flipped it the honorary bird of silence.  How can we stand against an enemy that we don’t even acknowledge?  Do not the military and sports people alike spend significant time learning the ways of their enemies?  How also can I stand against Satan when I have forgotten that the victorious power of Jesus Christ and Him crucified is inside of me!  In ignoring my enemy, I see now that I have ignored my God.

This was on my mind all day yesterday.  Last night when I crawled into bed I heard fireworks.  I sat and listened as if some battle cry in the distance was marching my way.  The fight is here, the fight is now.