This year didn’t get off to the grand start I’d envisioned especially given the word I chose for 2022: commence. My intention to kickstart the year in a fashion fit for my new beginning didn’t quite turn out with a splash. But it did begin with a thud, or a crash rather. I lost my baby boy, Nova a few days before Christmas and went through a sudden, unexpected end to a friendship shortly after the New Year began. In other words, these losses caused what otherwise would’ve been a bright start in a New Year to be a dark closet where I hid in a cloud of grief and sadness.
I slept, cried, mourned and regretted my way through January and by February after much prayer, rest and reflection, I started to see a light shine in the corner of my dark room. It wasn’t enough to start shouting with joy, but it got me to look outside my suffering and continue living despite my sadness and heartache.
I was able through the grace of God to look forward, to see what lies ahead that would continue carrying me out of the dark into a new season. I began to return to what I love, remember why I have so much to look forward to, focus on what is still good in my life and look at how far I’ve come to get here (even if where I am looks kind of grim).
joy will come
What I’ve learned so far in my suffering is there’s always joy in the morning. Your morning may not come tomorrow or next week or next month, but it will come. And I’ve been reminded through these hardships that joy can find you amidst your suffering—that snippets of joy can appear while the rain clouds are still covering your horizon and hiding the sun from your sight. The sun never left and that is how I see joy. Just because suffering is surrounding your life doesn’t mean there can’t be joy alongside it.
The beauty of this life is the duality of light and dark. We have to have both entities, but we can have them simultaneously. Just because darkness pervades your current landscape doesn’t mean light has left. You just have to search a bit harder for it and switch your perspective. Life might be rotten right now, and yet beneath all that hardship, heartache and loss is light—there’s still good if you look hard enough.
I am holding my suffering in my heart and allowing it to be whilst seeking small pockets of joy in my days, lest I drown in sorrow. On a particularly hard day, laden with grief, I stepped into the chapel to seek solace and comfort. I hadn’t spent significant time in the chapel since my loss. My soul was hiding out and clinging to the pain, without remembering God seeks to hold me in my suffering.
Soon after I sat in the pew, I heard a whisper, “Count it all joy.” Those four words referred back to a scripture that God wanted me to recall:
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
James 1:2-4 ESV
God used this scripture to remind me that He is using my current situation to grow me, refine me, heal my heart and mature my faith. He is asking me to trust that there is joy in the morning, that my best days aren’t behind me, that even if I’m suffering greatly, it’s not wasted nor will it last forever. God is using this for my good, to bring me out of a season meant to close so I can enter into the next chapter of my life, free of baggage I wasn’t meant to carry on board.
I found peace in these words from James, knowing God not only sees my hurt but wants to help me though it and finish His work in me as I go through the grieving process and open my heart to something new.
the pruning process
God has to prune our lives of what is holding us back so we can move forward lighter, more focused, free from unhealthy habits and relationships and enabled to serve our purpose. We might think we are going through a storm that will drown us, but God is using it to save us from ourselves and bring us into his plan and purpose.
““For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.””
I intended to jump forth into a new beginning but God intended to prune the branches of my current chapter before I began a new one. As I mourn the loss of what God removed from my life, I recall that there will be brighter days ahead. God removed things and people and habits from my life not to cause me pain but to bring about better days, days with less pain from what I wasn’t meant to bring with me.
I won’t be the person I was prior to the pruning process or the stages of grief. But that was always the grand plan. Who I am becoming as I walk through the refinery of suffering, perfecting my faith and trusting further in my Father God, will be ready for what is next.
There are no false starts in life, because everything we go through leads us into the light of tomorrow, where we learn, heal, grown and prepare for what God has planned for us. If we can keep our perspective fixed on the big picture, keeping both light and dark in our midst, we will soon walk into a brighter tomorrow, whether the sun is peering from behind the clouds or shining in all her glory.