when joy is dead

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed

that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)

A year ago today, God was putting life back into me. And by that, I mean joy. Mine was very gone. Nothing I tried was making it come back. I had reached a breaking point. I was really, really tired of fighting the battle in my own head. To believe God, to believe good, to believe I had purpose. I was seeking God and trying to be obedient and faithful, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore.

Honestly, I felt very purposeless, meaningless, and weary. Every day I was struggling. I’d wake up and not want to get out of bed, not because I wanted to sleep, but because I didn’t want to face the day.

Around that time, 1 Peter 5:10 had caught my eye:

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”

I honestly felt stupid for feeling like I was suffering. My life was not bad. I just couldn’t get out of this dark hole where I was living. The suffering was all inside. There was pain, just not the blood and guts kind.

I am rummaging for words to describe that place where you could’ve found my mind last February, in notorious 2020. Shuffling through my vocabulary, being picky about the words I choose, because I don’t want you to misunderstand me. God was still God, and all that He is. Good. Gracious. Present. Sovereign and faithful.

I just didn’t believe it anymore.

I was lost in some kind of fog. I didn’t know the way out. I want to do something uncomfortable and take you there, into my own mind in the months of those dark places, because maybe there is something for you here, too. Maybe you will recognize the terrain, the landmarks, the way the ground feels under your feet, the air temperature, the things that call it home. Maybe you have been there or are there. Maybe, if you’re still lost in this terrain, what I say here will be sweet and life-giving.

I’ll try to be painstakingly clear in how I communicate this, because this isn’t meant to be a feeling dump. I try not to live based on my feelings. But they are real, and they do play a part in this story, and ultimately feelings stem from beliefs. It’s the beliefs that I want us to park on.

So, hear my heart now, a year later, now that I’ve finally processed it. (Takes me awhile.)

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I had been operating on a cement belief that real satisfaction was accessible to me always in my relationship with Jesus. I found this principle to be reliable over and over again. I had learned that if joy was missing, I was the problem, not God. Repentance and belief unlocked it again. I was so content in my relationship with Christ.

Then things changed. I changed.

And I didn’t really like life anymore.

These are some of the things I was writing in my journal:

February 6 || I look at the days ahead and they all just seem the same. I think I used to believe in my purpose. This life used to be enough for me.

February 8 || I feel like my life will go on forever how it is right now, and that thought fills me with dread. I struggle so much with knowing my purpose here, and wondering what I’m supposed to do. “Say not, ‘why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.’” Ecclesiastes 7:10

(Oh, but I was asking.)

February 9 || I am not wise. So that means I am entirely dependent on you to show me where I’m broken and where I’m believing lies and how to get out of this web of despair.

February 10 || Aimless. I have found the joy of being part of something bigger than myself. And that is gone now. I feel lost, and blind, and weary. I think I think too much.

February 12 || I followed the moon home last night, on Kern and Pierce roads. I thought and I cried, like a lost child, but also like someone who has tasted hope again.

I was coming from Aunt Patty’s house. I always leave her house with more than I went with.

I love her stories. And I love her joy. And I love how sure she is, of who God is. She told me new stories—there are always more.

She told me that she has learned that life is nothing but seasons, and that in each of them God gives her someone to help. Maybe it’s for them and maybe it’s for her. She said God has purpose for me where I am, right now. And she listened to me, too. And she told me about her cats.

February 23||

Dark. Dark. Dark.

There used to be light in me, Father. There used to be radiant joy. But not now. I can’t see. No other gods before Me, You said. What have I made my god? People? Work? Position? Possessions? I am not strong. I am not sure. I am not okay with these moods that swing, plummeting, rising.

Truth. Truth. Truth.

Show me the truths to cling to. Drive into this brain Your promise of Your presence, always. You do not walk away. You do not retract the life You put in me. You do not retreat from this weak, wounded creature that I am. And I may not feel Your power at work in me, but it is here.

Your Spirit dwells in me.

So there you go: a window into my soul. An eyeful of how I was actually doing. Some days I was happier than others. Mainly, though, I was like dying fumes.

But on February 27, 2020, I was in Jamaica on the top deck of a scuba boat, living an evening that I could describe to you with all the words I can think up, but could never make you feel experientially. But God was pouring life back into my soul again. He had begun the ‘restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish’ part of 1 Peter 5:10 in me.

That week in Jamaica was the beginning of a several-months-long process of God restoring my joy.

And it started with a prayer God answered.

That’s a story for another time, but basically, God very specifically answered my prayer to be able to talk to someone I met in Jamaica about the gospel. He did it in the last possible hour, making an opportunity I never could have manipulated into happening. It’s funny how life-giving the gospel is to a saved person. (Or maybe funny isn’t the word for it. But like I said, that’s a story for another time.)

My point is that God did restore. It wasn’t right away, and it wasn’t actually because my circumstances changed favorably. (We went back home and you all know what happened next: quarantine.) Very gradually, day by day, He showed me that my joy problem was so simple and so basic that somehow I had become blind to it: I wasn’t finding my satisfaction in Him anymore.

I thought to myself, A satisfaction problem? That can’t be it. That was my problem last time!

And then I heard myself saying that and knew what a fool I was.

But knowing you have a satisfaction problem doesn’t solve it. (Check out "His Mind in Me" for more practical help on this!)

where the joy died

Backtrack to January 2020, and you would’ve found me watercolor painting at 1:00am in the basement. Maybe it sounds peaceful, but it really wasn’t. I had really, deeply wrestled that day, but as I sat there on the cement floor, I remembered that my best friend had written me a letter and I hadn’t opened it.

I put my paintbrush down and picked up the letter.

When I got to a part in her letter encouraging me to live out God’s joy to the people around me, I just sort of stopped mid sentence and stared at the handwritten letters on the page.

I thought, But I don’t even have that anymore. That reality crushed me. I had had it, once—that joy, not contingent on circumstance. Overflowing, radiant, wild. I had been so satisfied in God, on a steady basis.

But desires had slipped in. Not bad desires—they were good ones, actually. They were things I was actively praying for. And you know, it still stuns me a little to realize that I had grown my prayer requests into idols without even recognizing that it was happening. I was asking God for what I wanted, or needed, and I wanted it all so badly that I started to love those specific prayer requests more than I loved the God who satisfies.

Where once I had been so satisfied in the Giver, I had fallen in love with His gifts and allowed my joy to be all twisted up in them instead. Somewhere along the way, I had started believing the lie that I needed the gift. When God removed a gift He had given and I experienced that loss, I believed something I needed had been taken. And because I believed it, my joy was crushed.

When my contentment became dependent on God’s gifts to me, and then those things were stripped away or were left unfulfilled, I ended up so discouraged.

That night, God opened my eyes to what hadn't ceased to be true, even though I'd stopped believing it.

God is sufficient—He is enough.

God truly does satisfy—He is my joy.

But for that to make a difference, knowing has to become believing.

where joy comes alive

God—not His gifts—is the source of our joy.

Ephesians 1:3 explodes with a beautiful truth:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

This verse rattled me too. Did you see that?

The promised blessings are not tangible, physical, material blessings. The blessings God promises us are spiritual ones. That’s why a believer’s relationship with God is stabilizing through all the ups and downs of life in a broken world infested with sin. Anything can be taken from your life. Any gift can be stripped away. Any situation may wreak havoc in your own life or in the lives of those you love. Yet you still have access to joy, because the source of your joy is not the well of the gifts God gave you.

When the well dries up, you can cling to the actual source of joy: Christ.

In Christ, we have every spiritual blessing. Peace. Comfort. Grace. Hope. And those are just a few of them.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “Choose joy.” There’s a truth in that double-word encouragement, and a lie. The truth is that we, as believers, have access to joy at all times. The lie is that joy is something to be chosen all on its own—as if you could press a button on your heart and suddenly you’re happy now.

Joy is a byproduct, after all. Joy is the result of actively believing that Jesus is who He says He is. It’s severing the oxygen supply of the lies we let slip in about Him and replacing them with the truths we need to believe about Him.

Joy doesn’t come from my heart—a reality I found surprising.

It comes from the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22), who dwells in me. It comes from the Spirit renewing (transforming) our minds with truth (Romans 12:2). It comes from fellowship with Christ:

“That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”

(1 John 1:3-4 ESV)

In John 15, Jesus compares Himself to a vine and His disciples to branches growing off of that vine. Apart from Him, He says that the branches (us) wither, bear no fruit, and are burned. But the branches that abide (dwell/remain connected) on the vine are the ones that are sustained with nourishment, growing, and bearing fruit. At the end of this illustration, Jesus says,

“These things I have spoken to you,

that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full”

(John 15:12).

It helps me to visualize this vine-branches idea like a vacuum cleaner: there’s a whole lot of power, if it’s plugged in. And it’s absolutely worthless, if it’s not. If we’re connected to Christ, there is so much joy to be had. But apart from him, we have no power and no joy and no good.

I love that Jesus so clearly communicates His desire for us to be filled up with joy. And I love that He tells us exactly what we have to have to be full of joy: we just need one thing.

Just God.

In Him, we have every spiritual blessing. What belongs to us always, in every circumstance, is not tangible, and although it doesn’t sustain our physical bodies, it certainly sustains our hearts and minds. In Him I have peace. In Him I have forgiveness. Joy. Patience. Hope. Grace. Longsuffering. Mercy. Kindness. Gentleness. Comfort. Rest. Contentment, abundant and steady. All of these things, in Him, for life.

I have need of nothing outside of Christ and the spiritual blessings that are in Him. (And yet our kind God delights to give us so much more.)

So. I’m absolutely not over here saying that if you’ve lost joy and you don't know why, it’s a simple one-two-three step process to getting it back. And I’m not saying it’s easy, because I don’t believe that. But I am saying that God is not playing games with you. I’m saying He does what He promises.

And I’m saying His desire is for your joy, and I'm testifying that He Himself is the source of it:

“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,

that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

Psalms 90:1