I take the time every morning in introspection and prayer. Quieting my heart and mind, centering my runaway emotions and fears and confusions, finding that inexplicable peace from God that quite simply puts a welcome sign on each day.

Today I am meditating on three words: Difficulty, Joy, Trust

Those three, all together like that.

Difficulty Joy Trust

DifficultyJoyTrust

Like they are meant to go together, meant to inspire the other and as though each would be incomplete on their own.

Now, the Joy and the Trust we like, it is the Difficulty that often gets us and that we shy away from.

Today though, I completely get it, really feel it in my gut, that ‘Yes!’, these three are bosom buddies.

Of course!

“Welcome DifficultyJoyTrust, thank-you for gracing my life.”

Throughout the years we have our fair share of difficulty. You have, I have, we all have.

There is not anything any one of us have gone through that there hasn’t been someone else who has gone through the same.

Troubles abound

And yet…

In the midst of difficulties the very fibers of our stamina is increased, the muscles of our hearts are strengthened, the capacity for breath in our lungs is expanded.

Difficulty paves the way for Joy to be that much sweeter,

For Trust to be so very real;

Intangible realities that are in fact the very foundation of our lives, and that once we have none can take away.

I’ve had my own difficulties – things that today I wouldn’t wish away if I could.

I’ve been through times of severe deprivation where I was starving myself so my kids could eat, times where I was dependent on donations of clothes for my kids, and where I didn’t know how I was going to pay my bills.

I’ve been through rape and sexual abuse, and the process of processing all of that. Of getting in touch with all that is not right, of standing my ground and saying ‘no more’. Of hard heart work and journey’s through inner cauldrons of hate and bitterness and despair.

I’ve been through loss upon loss. The normal losses and deaths of Grandparents, and then the not-so-normal losses of a brother when I was young and of a grand-daughter just last year.

I’ve been through a tough marriage, full of addiction and dysfunction and abuse. I’ve known the loss of dreams and the loss of love. Rejected and dismissed time and again, from numerous sources …

I’ve found that life goes on.

And that for all these, because of these difficulties I am stronger and wiser and equipped for great works.

The preparation of difficulties cannot be underestimated,

Neither discounted or wished away.

Difficulties are in fact grand opportunities to use inner strengths we didn’t know we have, to find God’s strength we didn’t know was available to us, and to become the kind of people we’ve always wanted to be.

This is the Key: It is in the giving over and the relinquishing of every single thing we have held so dear and thought so very important, we find Joy.

When life by virtue of difficulty removes from our beings the ‘shoulds’,

You know what I am talking about, the ‘that should be this way’,  ‘you should do such and such’, ‘they should yada-yada’, ‘we should…’

When every ‘should’ is pressed free from our lives and language and expectations,

Joy floods in as a gentle warm bath, permeating every layer, it is simply there.

When it arrived we cannot tell,

It was somewhere in the midst of the difficulty.

Joy doesn’t come when every thing is easy. It comes in difficulty.

Trust too, is the same.

Trust grows as we are broken.

When life throws something at us that tests us to the core, demanding of us to relinquish our very life as we know it,

Then trust really takes root. And we will never be the same

Glory be to God.

“Welcome DifficultyJoyTrust, thank-you for gracing our lives.”

May we simply do right by you.