Pure Joy

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James 1:2-4 (NIV)

Sometimes it’s hard to think of life’s challenges as pure joy. I remember back in the fall of 2009 I caught H1N1 like a whole bunch of other people and got myself quarantined at home with my wife and (then) two young sons. In those 5 days where we were all stuck in our 600sqft bungalow together I began to understand why Joanna had been complaining since our second son was born that we needed somewhere bigger to live. So we fixed up the remaining unfinished jobs around the house and put it on the market in November.

We prayed a lot during that time that God would grant us an increase in value that was enough to move into somewhere bigger, yet affordable based on our limited income and it seemed as though God answered our prayer. The house sold for a good price on Christmas Eve (Merry Christmas to us!) and we received a large sum of inheritance money from Jo’s family, which empowered us to move up the property ladder a sufficient amount to give our family more space. It seemed as though everything was coming up Smiths and God was on our side.

And then we experienced pure joy.

We had our eyes on a house that had been stagnating on the market without any offers for quite some time and all we needed was to sell ours so that we could make a decent offer and secure what we thought was our dream home. So right after Christmas we went with our realtor to see it again, we still loved it and we made what we thought was a fair and reasonable offer considering how long it had been on the market. Someone else must have had the same idea, because we got outbid and lost the house. Pure joy.

 

Then over the next few weeks we looked at what I’m sure was every single house in Estevan that was even remotely close to our criteria and price range and found nothing.

Nothing.

Near the end of January, with a February 15 date set for losing possession of our home we were nowhere close to finding a new place to live and I was leaving for 10 days in Guatemala on a short-term missions trip! Why my wife is still with me after pulling that stunt is a testimony to God’s grace in itself. But as the clock wound down we still had nowhere to go and things seemed even more desperate.

It’s at times like this that I begin to wonder if we made a huge mistake. Had we misheard God’s will for our family? Had we overreached, been greedy, selfish or overly ambitious in what we tried to accomplish? Had we screwed up and were we facing the wrath of a disappointed God? After all we had originally downsized to that house because we were financially foolish and needed to get our house in order (literally and metaphorically). Were we running from God’s plan or to God’s plan? These are the sorts of questions that pop into my head when pure joy happens.

So we endured. We cried. We reached out wits’ end and then went a few miles past. And then, when all seemed lost God spoke. I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was sitting in the third row on the right side of the Rio de Vida Church in Tactic Guatemala during their Sunday service when I heard God say to me, almost audibly:

“I’ve got this.”

And that was it. The sermon that day was on James 1, and the preaching spoke to my situation in an eerie sort of way, but it was that one short word from God that sealed it for me. He’s got this. All of the sudden pure joy – if only for a moment became pure joy. But Joanna wasn’t so lucky. She didn’t’ have the luxury of getting away from it all and spending concentrated and focused time with God on the mission field – she had to deal with the pure joy of raising two kids, keeping the household running, working at the church and at home, all while trying to find us a new home – which she couldn’t. I can only wince in retrospect how hurtful my glib optimism and assurance must have been upon returning from Guatemala with only a fortnight until homelessness – again, why she stays married to me is a mystery of biblical proportions. But within three days God’s word was vindicated and we had seen, purchased and were taking possession of a new house before our deadline.

And it was the right house; what God had promised us all along. It was perfect for what we needed and although we had to pay through the nose for it, it was (barely) in our price range, we never had to be homeless.

So what is the moral of the story? That everything works out? That if you wait long enough God’s blessings will always come through in the end?

Nope. That season was horrible. And even after the elation of God coming through on the house the road beyond that was anything but rosy. We almost lost the house because that inheritance money from the UK got held up in international transfer limbo. Shortly after spending nearly all our money on this house our boss resigned and our future was thrown into turmoil and uncertainty. Joanna had a botched wisdom tooth removal that left her with a hole in her sinuses. We got pregnant, and Joanna developed a massive ovarian cyst that put her in hospital required her to miss Christmas with her family after we had traveled across the ocean to be with them. Considering things pure joy is one of the hardest commands of the scriptures.

There is no moral to this story. It’s simply a reminder. A reminder to me that amidst the pure joy that we get to experience every day that God is still with us. What that looks like, or what that means is anyone’s guess but I know that what I’ve been through – good and bad – has made me who I am today; and what I’m going through – again, good and bad – is making me into who I’m supposed to become. Some days I wish I wasn’t lacking so much perseverance and maturity that I need to experience so much pure joy but God knows what he is doing, and he allows it in my life because he loves me and he wants to make me better.

If it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself of my own words – it’s because I am. This might just be the most selfish blog post I’ve ever written – I need to be reminded of God’s plan and presence. All of those questions that we asked ourselves when we moved houses back then have been resurfacing now. All of the doubts about missing out on God's will come back in waves from time to time. On one hand things are going great - but on the other things seem really, really hard and it's hard to find joy in the mess of life and I need to be reminded again and again that He's got this. So this blog is for me, but perhaps you need some convincing too. My prayer for you today is that the pure joy of the trials that you are facing may give way over time, and through endurance, to the pure joy of being made more and more into the person that God wants you to be. Because after all: there has to be a reason for all of this.

Right?

…Right?