Over and over the Bible commands me to not only rejoice but to rejoice always. Can you hear me sighing?
My life experience seems to be that joy is hardest for me to find when it should be easy. I've seen God answer so many prayers lately--the healthy delivery of twin grandsons, the collection of our shoeboxes that brought our area total to 50,793 (pretty far under our 54,321 goal but still 405 more than we collected in 2017.) And just last week I got a great deal on an order of four pallets of items for next year's packing party. Still, I struggle to rejoice.
And when you want to be an obedient believer but can't seem to find the joy--well, then you add guilt to the fight.
And, truthfully, I'm writing this blog so I can at least say I got one written during the month of November.
Yesterday, fighting recurring feelings of failure, I decided to go donate blood. I figured that would help me feel better. Wouldn't you know--for the first time in my life the blood flow slowed to a near trickle at only half a pint and they had to work to get it flowing again to finish the donation. I mean, who fails at donating blood?
Apparently I'm an over-achiever in the failure department this week. Today I was trying to feverishly finish the OCC monthly team reports I've procrastinated about for the past few months and couldn't even figure out how to input the figures into the spreadsheet. I was out of town helping my daughter with her new twins during National Collection Week so today our new Central Drop-Off Team Leader came over to complete the paper work that should have been mailed in days ago. We discovered we didn't have the drop-off logs/closure packet from one of our drop-off sites! They're going to scan and send them to us (41 sheets to print off on our home printer) and they are going to be submitted late. And in a matter of days it will be time to send the OCC prayer requests to the prayer partners again. Why do I always dread trying to figure out how to do that every month?
There aren't any crises occurring in my life so why do these little annoyances seem to leave me joyless? I wish I knew.
I met with an older friend/mentor today who confessed to the same struggle lately. She reminded me that joy is one of the characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit. So is a lack of joy a spiritual problem or maybe a result of unconfessed sin (well, there's always that.)
Meanwhile, as I ponder this I'm trusting this is only a season. Just as the sun will one day shine through these winter gray Erie skies (please say it will happen soon) I sincerely believe joy will trickle in
