Five Years of Joy

December 28, 2017

It was on this day five years ago that God spoke to me. It wasn’t a Charlton Heston moment; there was no basso voice booming through smoke and thunder. But it was clearly God. I had been actively following the elections, and doing my part, passing along the snarky Facebook posts that were circulating so freely back then. In short, I was caught up by it all, until on this day, God asked me what had happened to my joy. How do I know it was God? Simply because I can find no other explanation for that question that popped into my consciousness that day. And because later, as I was trolling the internet, I happened upon a website called aholyexperience.com. The name has changed since then, but the author behind that web address, Ann Voskamp, had written “1,000 Gifts,” a New York Times bestseller. She had also developed a calendar of things for which to give thanks; three suggestions for each day of the year. 

I made a decision then to stop focusing on all the negativity, and only write an post about subjects that were uplifting and positive. I was amazed at how difficult I found it at first; it felt like I was somehow shirking my responsibility to speak “the truth,” until I realized that I had only been preaching to the choir. 

I have to confess that occasionally I backslid, but for the most part, I’ve kept that commitment for the past five years. What amazed me was how it changed me. For most of my life, I’ve lived under a cloud of melancholy. I don’t know why, or where it came from, but it’s been my companion for most of my adult years. But after a year of writing about the things for which I was thankful, I woke up and realized that the cloud had lifted. I’m not what anyone would call the life of the party, but I am definitely different. What I hadn’t realized was by focusing on what was wrong; by dealing in all the negativity, I had been disobeying one of the clear commands of Scripture where we are told to “give thanks in everything, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1 Thess. 5:18). It’s hard to experience joy in the midst of clear disobedience. 

Tonight I am thankful for that word five years ago that literally changed the course of my life. I am thankful for God’s patience through all the years while I was ignoring his clear instructions, and I am grateful that the cloud has lifted, and finally, for God’s unceasing and unwavering grace and mercy that met me that day, and didn’t let me go.