When Joy Doesn’t Come In the Morning.
Faithfulness isn’t revealed in our moments of strength. Faithfulness is in the struggle.
I can’t fix this.
My entire body feels like it’s slowly suffocating. I can feel the pressure in my chest, the heaviness of each breath, the fatigue in my muscles, the tension in my back. I’m discouraged. Lonely. Depressed. Tired.
And, it’s morning. A new day! A day I had been looking forward to all week. And, my heart feels like it’s in my shoes.
I try desperately to pull it up. Climbing to 30,000 feet, I point out all the milestones along my journey that attest to progress on this path toward healing and redemption. Started counseling. Forgave that person. Broke down that wall. Established that boundary. Had that hard conversation. Wrote a book.
So many things that felt massive and impossible have happened. I’ve seen and palpably felt God working. I’ve experienced miracles.
See, we’re doing fine! We’re checking all the boxes on all the right things. All we have to do now is trust and wait on the Lord. Find joy in the midst. Surely, the breakthrough, the finish line, complete healing is just around the corner?
The weight in my chest deepens.
Why is my heart so heavy? Will I always feel this broken?
Why are you so downcast, my soul? Put your hope in God! Look around you at all the blessings. The sun is shining. You want for nothing. You are healthy. You have the day off!
But, it’s not my soul that is crying out. It’s my body. And, I can not will it into submission or joy. I can neither soothe nor contain its pain. I feel inadequate. Everything feels so much bigger than me. Out of my control. Too much for me.
How do we rally, when our bodies feel misaligned with our hearts and minds? When we are weighed down with palpable discouragement, grief, or pain? When we realize that in spite of our best efforts, of what we know to be true, the world and people and relationships remain broken? And, we can’t fix it.
What do we do when we feel the crushing weight of the in-between and the unknown. How do we survive when we feel the desperation of unmet needs and the unquenchable hunger deep within us that feels impossible to satisfy this side of glory?
I wonder, am I the only one who feels this way?
I start reading scripture, and the Spirit leads me to the story of Elijah.
This prophet, whose name means, “my God is the Lord” is one of the mightiest prophets and miracle workers in all of scripture.
A devoted man who loves the Lord and his people deeply, Elijah courageously proclaims the sovereign glory of God in spite of great resistance. He singlehandedly takes a stand, alone against 450 false prophets. In a monumental act of bold faith, he literally prays down fire from heaven in a miraculous display that wins the hearts and souls of the onlookers back to God. But, the ruling queen’s heart is unaltered and unmoved. She vows to kill Elijah in retaliation, and he runs in fear.
Hiding under a bush, he prays for God to take his life. “I have had enough,” he says. And, then he falls asleep.
And, Jesus comes looking for him.
Jesus touches him. He makes him fresh bread and gives him water and encourages him to eat. Elijah eats, drinks, and falls back asleep.
Jesus comes a second time. He touches him again. “The journey is too much for you,” He says. Eat some more. Drink some more water.
Refreshed, Elijah continues his journey for 40 more days before he comes to a cave to spend the night.
And, God comes looking for him. “What are you doing here?” He asks.
Elijah then confesses his feelings to the Lord, puts words to his pain. “I am the only one left,” he says. Broken. Discouraged. Lonely. The very best work of His life couldn’t win the nation of Israel back to the Lord. From mockingly confidant to desperately depressed, Elijah is undone.
God tells him that He’s going to reveal Himself in a special way. A powerful wind, an earthquake, and a fire shake the earth around Elijah, but God is not in them. And, after the fire comes a gentle whisper. And, Elijah experiences the deep fellowship and healing presence of the Lord.
The Lord meets his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. His whole being is strengthened.
God then sends Elijah back, but the first thing He does is to pair him up with another body, a man who will serve him with devotion and become a lifelong friend.
Our God is a God of comfort. He is a faithful provider. But, what strikes me most about this account is that so much of it is about a body. A human body, that breaks, feels hunger and pain, exhaustion, and deep emotion. God first comes to touch this body, to nourish its desperate need. He acknowledges Elijah’s feelings and meets his body’s needs with divine generosity, grace, and presence.
Just like Adam and Eve in the garden, God’s response is gracious provision. Their response is to hide from the Lord, to isolate themselves and try to meet their needs on their own, sewing fig leaves together in a futile effort to cover their shame.
God comes looking for them. And, He makes clothing for them.
God first comes to touch this body, to nourish its desperate need.
Halfway through writing this blog, I read a book by K.J. Ramsey called This Too Shall Last (it’s now on the must-read list on our resources page). Prophetic and timely, her words were a gift from God. She says “somehow we Christians have come to believe that we have bodies, not that we are bodies.” Somewhere along the way we forgot that God created us with “brains in bodies.”
From the beginning, we have been embodied and those bodies were declared “very good!” While we hold the breath of God, we hold it in bodies. We were designed to be in relationship with God and with one another. But, those relationships are embodied. Likewise, our brains and bodies are shaped by our relationships.
I am undone by the God who keeps coming to look for us, and to meet the needs of our bodies. In our brokenness and sin and shame, the love of our God never fails. He keeps knocking. And, in his ultimate act of love, He shows up.
And, He comes in a body.
Ramsey says, “the spectacle of God‘s love was never power or prestige but descent.” Jesus came down, was born, and lived among us.
When I look at the embodied life of Jesus, I see the Temple of God inhabited by God. And, I realize Jesus didn’t just die for my sins, He lived for me.
The author and perfecter of our faith, the One who went to the cross for the joy set before Him, joined us in body, lived in our brokenness, steeped Himself in our pain. His coming not only redeems our lives, but it also showed us how to live in these bodies once holy and eternal, now destined to experience decay and death.
In this body, Jesus suffered and sorrowed and struggled.
When I look at the embodied life of Jesus, I see the Temple of God inhabited by God. And, I realize Jesus didn’t just die for my sins, He lived for me.
As the God man experienced a life lived under the curse, He was known as a man of sorrows. In this living, He shows us how to live and love in the tense, messy, heavy, in-between space of this life, this piece of eternity, this side of glory.
During His time here, Jesus experienced physical need and strong emotions. He had to eat and sleep to sustain His body. He needed a strong mother, a family to be born into. He sought out close friends and deep fellowship. And, He was anything but reticent. He felt deeply. He wept. He dealt with anger and grief. He despised and scorned the shame of the cross. He prayed constantly, sought the Father daily for strength. And, He struggled with God, falling on his face and asking to be spared from pain and suffering, not once but three times. And, He asked His friends to wait up with Him, to sit with Him, pray with Him. He didn’t hide his anguish; He invited them to bear witness to it.
When I feel utterly alone in my suffering or the dysregulation of my body, I remember that it is not just that I am human, it’s that I was created to live in and feel this body. I take comfort in the fact that we don’t serve a God who lives outside of or immune from our pain. We see Jesus right there in it with us, weeping, shaking, sweating, struggling, and praying it all out before God.
In His suffering, we see a glimmer of the beautiful, gloriously perfect relationship of our triune God, revealed in the suffering, embodied Jesus, desperate for His father to not turn His face away, to be separated from Him even for a moment. And, I wonder at the weight of what we lost in the garden.
What a glorious truth that we have a High Priest who is able to sympathize with our bodies. When we see Jesus, thick in sorrows and emotions, I start to grasp our need for His desperate prayers for our well-being and against our vulnerability to the deceitfulness of sin. Our need for relationship, comfort, and encouragement is revealed in Jesus’ body, breaking in front of us.
Sometimes, I minimize my pain by recognizing how much more Jesus went through than me. But, Jesus’ example is not so that we can compare our circumstances but so that we can compare our response. It’s astonishing to me that I can hold so much faith and confidence in my eternal hope alongside such debilitating grief and anguish in my body. But Jesus did this. He held this tension for us, and He holds it with us still. This is the epitome of faithfulness. Faithfulness embodied.
Faithfulness isn’t revealed in our moments of strength. Faithfulness is in the struggle.
It’s astonishing to me that I can hold so much faith and confidence in my eternal hope alongside such debilitating, grief and anguish in my body. But Jesus did this. He held this tension for us, and He holds it still with us. This is the epitome of faithfulness. Faithfulness embodied.
When “joy doesn’t come in the morning,” I take comfort in knowing that we serve a God who knows our pain. He comes looking for us, in our sin and weakness and brokenness, not in our healing or strength. And asks, “where are you?”
I stand in utter awe of the God who clothes us in the midst of our disregulation and shame, not in our self-sufficiency. When life overwhelms us and we are worn out and discouraged, He shows up not in an overstimulating show of power but speaking softly.
When “joy doesn’t come in the morning,” I take comfort in knowing that we serve a God who knows our pain. He comes looking for us, in our sin and weakness and brokenness, not in our healing or strength.
In our suffering, may we always remember that He is God and we are not. We serve a God who knows our pain even more intimately than we do, and He isn’t far off. He is close enough to whisper.
Friends, we are bodies and these bodies were not created to be alone or neglected. We will live this whole life in the between, with spiritual, emotional, and physical needs and hunger. Glory is coming, but the true new day has not yet dawned. For now, we feel, we suffer, we live.
And, we stay faithful. What we need when this day, this month, this year is too much for us, isn’t condemnation or isolation – it’s presence. We need God. And, we need each other.
For me, trauma and the shaping of my brain due to trauma too often drives me into isolation when life gets hard. I hunker down and wait it out and re-emerge when I think I’m feeling better. More fun. More enjoyable. Less needy. (If you tend to do this too, read this book).
What we need is presence. We need God. Our bodies need other bodies. We need to be seen, touched, fed, and given space to rest. We need to speak, and we need to be heard.
In this life, I believe what we fear most is not actually suffering itself but suffering alone, experiencing pain in the absence of an empathetic witness. This is the very definition of trauma.
And, God did not create us to be alone.
What we need is presence. We need God. Our bodies need other bodies. We need to be seen, touched, fed, and given space to rest. We need to speak, and we need to be heard.
Honor the needs God created you to experience. Have the courage to humbly care for the body that is you. Tell people you need their presence. Invite them to witness your pain. You don’t just need another pill, book, mantra. You need presence. You need to care for your body, and you need another body to care for you too.
Friends, you and your body are a story. And, your body and brain are shaped in the holding of that story. Our bodies and spirits are not something we surgically divide and overcome but something we ought to treat as holy creations of God, something to bless and restore and redeem.
In this life, we will have struggles. Our suffering is not a secret to keep until it passes. Jesus told us to come to Him with our burdens. He doesn’t dismiss or judge them. He says come to me, because I care for you. And, He told us to love one another, to comfort one another, and to encourage one another daily, until He returns.
Our bodies and spirits are not something we surgically divide and overcome but something we ought to treat as holy creations of God, something to bless and restore and redeem.
Lay down the idol of self-sufficiency. Confess and bless your needs. Joy comes through comfort and fellowship with one another. Fellowship comes through confession.
One day, our true joy will come in the morning, but our Morning Star hasn’t come yet. Our faithfulness is revealed when we humbly and courageously face the sorrows of this life and confess our weaknesses and needs to one another. When we hold one another’s pain. Faithfulness comes when we can pull it out and painstakingly weave it into the tapestry, knowing that every thread will one day be touched by the hands of our Savior, ushered into glory. Faithfulness is in those hands. Those hands that touched us, prayed for us, healed us, fed us, and were pierced for us.
Faithfulness is in the struggle.
