I sat on the couch reading when I heard a few sniffles from the kitchen. Hyrum was in his highchair stuffing handfuls of popcorn into his mouth and Ava was at the table.
“Are you ok Ava?” I asked.
“Ya,” she reponded confidently.
A minute later she walked up to me with a handful of pictures she had gathered earlier from the front of the fridge. She leaned against me, holding the pictures out so I could see them. I looked down at some of my favorite pictures–of the Savior and the temple–then looked back at her. I noticed a little tear on the top of her cheek.
“You have a tear,” I said.
She nodded.
“How come you have a tear?”
She kept her eyes on the pictures in her hands.
“Because I feel joy.”
I felt the tears well above my cheeks and hugged her close enough to whisper.
“These things bring me joy too.”
Happiness has seemed largely elusive to me over the past few months. It’s been a hard time, and I have struggled to keep my head up.
So often I am lying on the couch, trying to pull myself out, trying to figure out how. Not that I’m trying to get off the couch–I’m supposed to be there, and have been the past six weeks.
But I’m trying to learn what it means to have joy in the midst of trial, when things aren’t so inherently happy and we have to push ourselves deeper to feel it. My whole life I’ve felt joy–it seems to come so easily in the good times and return quickly after the bad.
This time has been so different though.
Perhaps it’s because I’m still in the thick of the hard things–brilliant sunshine and steady air are still stretches ahead of me. But I also think there is much good in this–good that really doesn’t feel so happy, but is good for me. And maybe there is joy in that too.
I’ll tell you a little bit how. Lately I feel like I am learning what it means to really rely on God. I am learning how to trust more, hope more, endure more. But it doesn’t feel like blind trust or empty hope. It’s not at all. In the midst of my struggle, I am seeing how real and wonderful the Savior’s grace really is. As I have turned to Him so desperately at times, pleading for Him to take my hand and lift me, He does.
He really does lift me.
I wish I could describe it or even pinpoint exactly how I have felt strengthened, lifted, and loved, but I can’t really. I feel it though. It is real. And now when I think of Him, things are different. I can hardly keep the tears from swelling. I am so grateful for Him and what He suffered so that He could help me like this. I have felt His love AND His grace, and my heart is so much more full. So as much as I’ve been feeling my days to be dim, as much as I am struggling, my joy is still there. It’s more of a quiet, grateful feeling, but it is still there. And that’s enough for now.
Things are hard, but I am growing. Uncomfortably so, but it is still good. This kind of growth needs the rain just as much as it needs the sunshine. And the sunshine will come, soon enough.
