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Writer's pictureSarahHauer
Oct 173 min read

Joy is Real




I have reached the end of the Searching for Joy blog series. Thank you for sharing in this part of my healing journey. It has been long and strenuous but well worth the effort.


At this point in healing after trauma, many people make a statement like, "I wouldn't change a thing." I don't feel that way. If I could go back and change things, I absolutely would. Since it isn't possible, the next best thing to do is to make the most of it. That has been my goal. Maybe, I can help others navigate and shorten their own healing journeys.


I am confident in saying that I did find joy again. I don't have it every day. I have it most days. There are times I get knocked to the side and have to search around some. It gets easier with time and practice.


When I first embarked on my adult journey of marriage, parenting and life, I never foresaw myself here under these conditions. I married for love. I parented the best I could with what I knew and failed many times. (Sorry, kids.) I believed in the power of love.


I'm older now, wiser, more experienced, and I still believe in the power of love. Love itself looks different to me now. It isn't the giddy, butterflies in the stomach love from romance novels and movies. Disney programmed us for unsustainable marital relationships. Real love is quiet, grounding, faithful, and forgiving.


As a society, we need to teach truthfully about relationships, all kinds of relationships. We need a Mr. Rogers type of person to teach all of us, young and old, what a healthy love looks like. Do we have anyone who really fits the bill? I've seen some potential candidates. No one seems to have all the answers. We are all flailing individuals trying to do our best.


I once asked myself this question, "Which is harder; loving someone who doesn't love you back, or someone loving you whom you don't love in return?" I understand now that that was entirely the wrong question. It's easy to love someone who doesn't love back, and it's impossible for someone to love you and not love them back if you understand what true love is. I was viewing love as transactional, not as a gift freely given with nothing expected in return. I now see it is possible to love and not necessarily be in relationship, not if it's unhealthy. Real love doesn't require conditions. Relationship does. We can love our enemies and not suffer from it.


Us humans confuse words and definitions. Love, relationship, forgiveness, respect, etc. We don't have matching ideas of what these things are or what these words mean. We don't share the same vision of what they should look like.


Other things besides love I can only give as I have. If I don't have them, then I don't have them to give. But love, real love is endless and boundless and conditionless. Love doesn't fail us. We fail it. I fail it. Every day.


This final blog for this series should be some sort of conclusion. I am struggling writing it. I've been working on it for two weeks. How do I conclude something that is not at an end? The series is, but not the lessons. There is so much more for me to learn and explore about myself, God, the world, and my loved ones. There is no end to this journey and so much more adventure to come.


Thankfully, I don't take this journey alone even when I am alone. I am guided. I am supported. I am loved through it. Joy is the map that guides me along, not the destination. It's the teddy bear in challenging times, the light in the darkness. It's not fleeting. It's sustaining. It's knowing that at the end of all things, there is more.


Thank you for reading. If you missed previous blog posts in this Searching for Joy series, you can find them here at https://www.sarahhauer.com/blog/categories/searching-for-joy


Love forward, and God bless!


Sarah

Humor In Chaos


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