Consider It Pure Joy

Last Sunday I was speaking with a friend of mine who brought home an 8 month old from the Congo two years ago this week.

She went on to say that the little one was struggling hard this week. That trauma is real and manifesting itself in this precious child, especially during the anniversary. 

Oh, how I understand that.

Then she said something that was really a fundamental shift in the way I view those hard times. 

Well,  really the way that most of us view those hard times. 

She said (with her eyes full of the pain she had been watching her son go through) "Even though it is hard, I am just so thankful and honored that we get to go through this with him."

Wait. What?!

I will be honest. I was not thankful and honored when, this morning, I had to listen to Daniel try and push my buttons over and over by saying, while in time out, "Mommy, listen to me! I want a different mommy!" And, I kid you not, he said it stinking twenty times if he said it once.

It doesn't hurt my feelings, but it is mighty inconvenient when I am trying to get the kids out of the house, but Daniel is in trauma-meltdown-mode because he has had a schedule change at school and one of the aids made him feel overwhelmed and so he is lashing out at me. As much as I would have loved to bundle him up and kick him out of the door so he could catch the bus, I knew that what I needed to do was address the feelings and the behavior and offer redemption. All before school started. 

Ugh.

I am SO not enough.

And I didn't get breakfast.

And I got a migraine.

Let's be honest, I was not considering serving Daniel in that moment pure joy. More like pure inconvenience.

And yet, in James 1: 2-8, we are told:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,^a whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Tonight when I went to write this post, I was reading the latter part of the scripture. "But when you ask you must believe and not doubt…"

Oh, Lord. I doubt. I am all about praying powerfully and totally believing that Daniel will grow up to love the Lord and serve Him. 

And then I have a day like today and the teacher calls to tell me that (when cornered, in all fairness) Daniel got in a fight on the playground and Daniel lashes out at me because some woman at school sniped about his reading skills. 

And then I am tossed like the sea. Doubting God's plan.

Oh, to consider it pure joy.

Even in the tough moments when I am inconvenienced.

That would be a radical shift.

This Thanksgiving I am deciding to be thankful for the few conflicts and struggles in our journey that I have experienced through this past year, as well as the mounds of wonderful, because they are shaping me into who God wants me to be. And so I will CHOOSE to be in the moment, to be filled with determination and grit for these tough times, to take the challenges and use them like a kite uses the wind.

And I am CHOOSING to speak this. To give these feelings words so that others can also experience that shift in thinking.

To, maybe, not expect so much out of myself and others.

To lay down those things that I have prayed for with the faith that God can pick them up.

To consider it pure joy.