Beauty Among Thorns: Loneliness to Joyfulness.

Last 3 years = Loneliest times of my life
I only share this moment of transparency in hopes of shedding some light for one woman in the midst your pain and struggle.
I fear I may be the next Job. It's a very real fear. It feels like everything has been taken away from me accept my sweet husband and son, and I fear what if they're next. It's been a lifetime of being overlooked by teachers and mentors, rejected by peers and tryouts, tossed aside by college professors, heartbroken by boyfriends and I thought moving to another state would be the solution. It did give me a renewed outlook and so not to focus only on the bad in my life, I simply want to be real.

Don't you feel like people just aren't real often enough?

I'm not scared to share the real struggles I have personally endured because I was laying in bed staring into the dark abyss of our bedroom and realized God is taking away and testing me to see if my faith will stand strong. And looking back on my lifetime of struggles, my faith did stand strong. I never did give up on God. I doubted him some days, I questioned and cried, but I never turned my back on him.

Somehow that thought made me smile.
God knew Job could be pushed and stretched, Job whined and complained but he never turned his back on God. Neither did I. All I have been able to focus on these last three years is why hasn't my life and the struggles gotten any better. I thought moving and a fresh start would solve that problem. But all that happened was a new set of struggles.

Moving to a new state with a new husband brings all new hurdles to overcome. I left family, lifelong friends, great community, weekly Bible study with women I grew to deeply love, I left all that behind in hopes of finding this better life I wanted. And it has been the loneliest, quietest, darkest times of my life. If you can relate keep reading. I won't focus only on the bad but for the sake of realness and honesty, here's some of the bad. My story isn't like Jobs where things were taken from me or close family or spouse and this may sound ridiculous to you but it was my dreams, desires, and hopes that were all taken from me. Everything we were so optimistic about all came crashing down. Being humbled to live with family, out of work, no money, the life I pictured for us quickly turned to bubbles bursting and hopes dashed. Sitting in a dark, gloomy apartment day after day through cold winter with no support and churches that continue to disappoint was so far from the life I had pictured.

Churches have never hurt or disappointed me more in these last few years than in my whole life combined. People discipling us just tossed us aside. Friends we invested in didn't even notice we were missing. Close friendships let me down time after time. I heard the words "too busy" as an excuse more than my sensitive ears would ever like to hear. Day after day the quietness of our dark, gloomy apartment became my dark, depressing reality. Bitter cold days of winter put a halt on work for my husband. Negative thoughts crept in and quickly took over. I started to believe there was no hope. There just was no. . . hope.

So enough of the negative nancy, I began asking myself how did Paul look pain in the face and see joy?

Paul had the ability to think beyond himself and beyond his circumstances. He could see the hope and the light. He could see the future and life eternal with Christ.
We have the tendency to be inward focused, to think about ourselves and see only our discouraging circumstances. If I could re-train my thoughts to think more like Paul and think outside of myself, maybe these hurtful church situations wouldn't stay with me so long, maybe these long winter days would be counted as pure joy, maybe I could be joyful in my loneliness.

We can't rely on people, we can't rely on circumstances, we can only rely on God our rock.

Psalm 91 is such a refreshing chapter to read out loud. Force yourself to read it. Out loud. This will sound super cheezy but the devil is knocking on the door of our hearts. The moment we recognize it's him trying to get in and bring us down is the moment we can stand and be strong. Disappointment, discouragement, despair, depression, darkness- do you think it's coincidence all my struggles these last few years start with the letter "D"? The devil wants to destroy me. He is out to steal, kill and destroy. And I let him. I fall on my bed like a mushy emotional ball and I let him.

But doesn't it make you smile that God is allowing these struggles into your life to test your faith and see if it will stand strong? It makes me smile. I think it's pretty encouraging to know God thinks I can handle the struggles. I made it through and my faith is stronger for what's ahead. I can put my hope in that.

This life is is never going to be perfect. Life is just hard but we can be thankful and joyful Moving to my dream sunny state and living on the water isn't going to fix my despair. I have to turn to God and rely on him. On those extra dark days when I'm staring out to the depressing courtyard, I have to open my mouth and force myself to praise God and push through another day because tomorrow will be better. I know it will be because God is bigger than my small circumstances.
I sit here on my counch under a blanket writing to you with snow falling outside and not a ray of sunshine in sight. I have a choice to fall into the bottom of my barrel and have a pity party OR open my mouth and praise God.

An author I love, Ann Voskamp, writes a book called "A Thousand Gifts" and puts out a joy dare to come up with a 1000 gifts over a year. I'm doing it and I challenge you to do it with me.

Go print out the list and it will guide you through the year challenge. http://www.aholyexperience.com/joy-dares/

Let's learn to be more joyful together.

There is beauty all around. It's not all bad and we can learn to notice.