This year has been an up and down battle of claiming an abundance of joy in my life to feeling like I am a dried up and dusty well where joy has abandoned me.
And this month in Cambodia as I near the end of the Race, I have been wrestling so much with the question, where does the joy go?
The joy goes when I see weddings or engagements happening without me there on my Facebook newsfeed. It goes when a best friend’s birthday happens and there is no way to even send a simple ‘Happy Birthday’ text, much less an Instagram post.
The joy goes when I feel abandoned, unloved, or isolated inside my own head. And too often, that is where I get stuck.
The joy goes when comparison sets up residence in my heart, pitches it’s tent and starts a fire with no intention of leaving anytime soon.
The joy goes when I think about the judgment I pass on myself looking to the end of July when I am home again in Florida. With no idea of what is to come next, the questions begin to plague me like flaming arrows shot right into my heart. Where am I going to work or live? Am I supposed to go back to grad school? Do I apply for a discipleship program instead? What are people going to think of me?
For too long, I have let the enemy dictate when it is taken from me. He uses other people and the inside of my own mind to do it. Trapping me there, feeding me the lies that I stand alone and not to rock the boat out of fear of creating ripples in the perfectly still surface.
And it always begins with comparison. Comparing to others who are better at me in just about everything I attempt. Better writers, better painters, better teachers, better friends, better students, better Christians, better people.
I cannot compare who I have been created to be with someone who God created completely different from me. He created us each so intricately and separate. And to expect similarity is an insult to His masterpieces.
Comparing blinds me from seeing how uniquely I was knit together. It blinds me from experiencing the whole of my identity because I am too concerned with people pleasing or fitting in with the mold of other’s limiting expectations of myself. Too concerned with living up to what other people expect of me and say I should be, forgetting what God expects of me and who He says I am.
This year I have compared myself to every single one of my squadmates and how I measure up to them and what God is doing in them. I have compared myself with ministry hosts and fellow hostel dwellers. I have compared myself with the faces my Facebook newsfeed likes to stream of those back home and how their lives are moving forward, without me. And it has limited me.
It has caused me to not write as much, to barely pick up a sketchpad or paints, to not have deeper intellectual conversations, because other people are better and more equipped than me. I have often thought that is their gifting and I would just embarrass myself in comparison.
So I have come face-to-face now with the question of not when does the joy go but where does the joy go.
I am now all too aware of when the joy goes, because I let it be taken from me in playing the comparison game. I choose to watch it go because I have been basing it on things that are going to let me down. Humans and things. Fickle items that can be influenced by the enemy in a plot against me, and I play like putty in his hand with it.
I feel paralyzed as I watch it slip from the loose grip I had on it.
Joy is meant to come from the deepest foundation of my heart, not the shallow surface that can be swayed back and forth with whichever way the wind blows. It is not meant to be an object of discussion on where it comes from and why it leaves so fleetingly.
But it does leave, so where does it go? I have been asking the Lord this question all month, and He has given me a very simple answer. It goes where I let it go. And for so much of this year, I have struggled right there.
It goes to people and comparison to them and choosing to stew in pity or self-loathing instead of turning to my ultimate source of joy, Christ. It goes anywhere away from me when I choose myself and put myself on the throne of my heart where God belongs.
I may be able to be temporarily happy with myself on the throne in control and making the decisions, but since I have tasted the overwhelming sensation and fulfillment that is joy, I can never be satisfied with anything less.
I am exhausted swaying in the waves of comparison. I will celebrate other’s gifting and know that just because they have them, does not mean I cannot. And I will know joy is permanently based in the foundation of my identity in Christ and the life of full surrender He has called me to.
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and He helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise Him.”
Psalm 28:7
