What Does God Want from Me?

Humor In Chaos

Searching for Joy

What Does God Want from Me?

One of the reasons I feel we lack joy is something many of us have: this gnawing sense of unworthiness.

We are sinners. As sinners we shouldn’t be happy, right? We are nothing but lowly creatures unworthy of the love and sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

Well, yeah, we are sinners, but hold up. We aren’t called to have such negative thoughts about ourselves or each other. How can we follow the call to live lives of joy in the Lord with negative views of ourselves? We can’t. Lack of self-love is a stumbling block to joy.

Usually when someone talks about love of self and caring for our bodies because we are the temples of God to dwell in, they always seem to gravitate to the verses on how God counts every hair on our heads, how He knew us before we were born, how He knows when a bird falls from the sky, and how much better He knows us than the birds. All true. But I want to go to the Psalms.

I think Psalm 8 should be plastered somewhere in Christian homes as a reminder of how precious we are to God. The entire chapter. It’s only nine verses, but this bit of poetry packs a holy punch in the gut.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!

Thou whose glory above the heavens is changed by the mouth of babes and infants, thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established;

What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care of him?

Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor.

Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet,

All sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!

Wow! That is a statement of God’s glorious love for us! Anyone who reads that slowly and thoughtfully should have a blown mind. It’s amazing! If you didn’t read it slowly, read it again. I’m going to right now.

Did you do it? Did you read it again? Did you get something new out of it? How do you feel now? Worthy of joy? I do.

He crowns us, in present tense, with glory and honor. Each of us. And, it gets better. He crowns all those around us too. Couple this with the second of the two greatest commandments Jesus gives us in Matthew 22:39 …You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Boom! As yourself. As much as yourself. Not your neighbor more than self. Not self more than neighbor. We are to love each other with the same amount we love ourselves and love ourselves the same amount we love each other.

This blew my mind when I first put these together.

Like most women in our world, I put everyone else before me. I was taught the same as many of you: that sacrificing myself for my husband and children, loving them more than I love myself, was how to be a perfect mom.

That’s not what we are called to do. We are called to love our own selves too. And we don’t run out of love if we get our love supply from God. He provides for all our needs, right? Yes, He does. We can get more from Him if we stay connected. If we prioritize our connection to Him. If we pray daily.

I will get more into prayer in a later chapter.

Right now, I want to take this knowledge about our worthiness and see if we can grow it into wisdom.

I am trying to get to two subjects that are both misunderstood and a little bit scary. Why? Because they both mean that we don’t have control. We like to think we do, but only God does.

The ability to live in joy in all circumstances, good and bad, means releasing control to God. Not trying to grab it. Not praying to God for a specific outcome and then deciding He isn’t real because we didn’t get the answer we dictated.

I am talking about vulnerability and acceptance. Scary, right?

There are people too afraid to live in joy. Why?

Brene Brown gives a great answer to this. In Chapter 11 in “Atlas of the Heart,” (a brilliant book for learning how to define feelings, an important skill for practicing intentionality and integrity) she talks about Foreboding Joy. I love when she says, “This is when the room gets quiet.”

Foreboding Joy is the idea that if something good is happening, something bad is bound to follow. She reassures us that this is a feeling experienced by almost everyone to some degree or another. I concur. Besides, she is the feelings expert. She did the science behind it. I’m just sharing my own experiences.

She offers up a healthy antidote to foreboding – gratitude. And I am going to talk about gratitude in depth in a later chapter. Right now, I will touch on it. But I also want to offer a second antidote – acceptance.

The online articles I wrote about my lupus experiences had multiple purposes. The main two were educating others because there is simply very little known about it in general, and to help me process the changes lupus caused in my own life. I needed to process so I could accept what was happening to me and find peace in the experience.

Accepting that my life as I knew it was over was a painful process because I didn’t have anyone to show me the way. People simply wanted to give me a quick fix. There is no quick fix to anything. Understanding that is a form of acceptance in itself.

I am sick at some level 100% of the time and have been since I was a teenager. I know from years of experience that there are people who will argue that point with me. Yes, I have been in and out of remission throughout my life, but remission does not mean cured. It can feel like cured, but it isn’t. Yes, there are people who have reached remission for the rest of their lives. Remission is wonderful, even when temporary.

I have been in remission for periods of time that lasted for years, but never more than a few years at a time. The longest period of remission was probably when I was in my 30s because that decade was when I felt the best. However, there were issues that persisted such as excessive fatigue and bruising that were not recognized by my doctors. Plus, a trip to China left me with a severe case of food poisoning which lasted a full two weeks followed by months of severe fatigue and skin rashes. Complaints to my doctor only got me pats on the head for not doing enough to handle my stress.

During my 40s when I finally got a correct diagnosis and was mostly in bed, miserable, I had people attempt to gaslight me about my experience. That gaslighting came in the form of “fake it till you make it” mentality. They didn’t mean to gaslight me. They loved me then and love me now. They were unknowingly promoting a state of denial.

What I mean is that they were trying to convince me that a positive mentality was a cure and that I just needed to change my attitude. If that was true, then my 30s would have cured me. Basketball and cheerleading as a teen would have cured it. Those were the times I was faking energy because I thought so was everyone else. I thought everyone had my same aches and fatigue. If faking it was going to work, it should have worked back then.

Denial, when it comes to health problems and marital problems, leads to disaster. Denial and forcing a positive mental attitude when in a state of pain is toxic positivity. True positivity, true positive mental attitude, is turning to face the pain, see it for what it is, and actively looking to solutions in a positive format. It is not pretending that everything is fine when everything is not fine. A true positive mental attitude doesn’t always mean a smile. Sometimes, it’s a face of grit and determination surrounded by adversity.

Grit and determination are some of the stones that line the pathway to joy. Real smiles happen as the stones are moved out of the way because they are no longer needed.

I don’t want to share here all my interpersonal lupus experiences. There are way too many. And most of them were wonderful, such as when a deacon’s wife at my church organized a faith formation class to prepare meals for me and my family while I was recovering from surgery. That was a huge blessing!

And during the divorce when I was facing homelessness, that same woman came through for me again. I was only homeless for a little over two weeks. Every tiny bit of help and support was a huge blessing. My sister took me in for most of those two weeks. The rest of that time, friends and family loaned me couches and extra bedrooms for a night or two here and there.

Over the years of illness, I got flowers from people when I had surgeries, and cards, gifts, handwritten letters, emails, phone calls with words of comfort, etc.

But, I also got gaslighting.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more!

Sarah

Humor In Chaos

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