Joy in the Storm

by: Sharon Hughes

“We are not ok.” Something I never wanted to say out loud but laying on my bed in tears, the words have found me and hold me in a tight grip. Only a few months earlier we celebrated our anniversary in our favorite city. We strolled hand in hand on bustling streets, feeling like ants beneath towering buildings stretched to the golden evening sun. We reminisced about our dating years and spoke expectantly our word for the year–joy.

Joy? It now feels elusive, like a bad joke or an incomplete thought. Transition after transition has gotten the best of us: a big move, job losses, job changes and a major church transition we didn’t know was coming. Our commitments have tied us to anything and everything while our seam of togetherness begins to stretch and tear. 

We find moments to gasp for air, only to find ourselves flailing in the waves of yet another late night fight, waking up with tired eyes in time to pour cereal for three little people and get them off to school. Our insecurities, doubts and fears have poked and prodded and here we are wounded-ourselves hurt and hurting. We are not ok.

Where are you God in all of this? I wish I could be writing from the other side. From the height and not the depth, from my best and not my worst. Journaling, eating healthier, positive thinking, saying sorry again and again, and counseling have all fallen short. I come to you in the night, looking for joy. I open my Bible and resonate with the Psalmists words:

“Tune me into foot-tapping songs, set these once-broken bones to dancing. Don’t look too close for blemishes, give me a clean bill of health. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don’t throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails!” (Psalm 51, the Message Version) 

And sails remind me of Noah. Who on the rising waters of the worst flood in history, I wonder if he perhaps wrestled with finding joy? Did he lose joy along with his home, his friends, and his job? Life as he knew it was disrupted. Jostled. Torn apart. He was in a season where the very breath of history rested on his shoulders. Did he crack from the pressure? Did his relationships suffer? Did fear or insecurity creep in? I’m searching for what he held onto and I almost missed it.

 “Noah, I am going to make a covenant with you.” (Genesis 6:18) As I continue to read I see the God of the universe, from the onset promised to keep Noah’s family together. He promised to bring them to dry land, to preserve their life rather than take it, to offer a way when there was no other way. When all felt unknown, suffocating, dark, and disruptive, the covenant of a Savior was what they held onto. Breath on the way. Hope for new life. Joy.

I’m still learning. Still in the eye of the storm, but I remember the promise of joy. No, not an emotional high, not even close, but a Savior who is holding us and carrying us through. 

There are 59 days left in 2022 and we are still holding onto our word of the year–JOY.