I know there is a big difference between happiness and joy. Like anyone else I yearn to be happy, but I’m also aware that happiness is rather shallow and fleeting compared to deep and abiding joy. The harder life gets, the more I am jealous for joy.

I used to have this drawn into the inside cover of my Bible when I was a teen:

J esus

O thers

Y ou

I know that some of what I write might be easily misconstrued – I certainly don’t mean to imply that we shouldn’t take care of ourselves and should instead run ourselves ragged tending to others’ needs and not to the needs of our own families. I am just beginning to more firmly believe that there is rest and joy in the prescription Jesus gave us in Matthew 6:33.

I know we are seeing the me-first, me-wonderful, me-deserve-it, me-want-it-now generation, but I can speak from experience that self-focus and getting everything you want doesn’t bring true joy. Walking with Christ brings joy. Trusting His purposes brings joy. Hearing Him speak directly to your heart through His Word brings joy.

I don’t experience as much joy as I would like. I do all sorts of things that rob my life of joy (worry being one), but I’m learning. It’s a tall order for a control freak to let go and surrender, but the more I know of Him, the easier it is to relinquish my life and loves to Him.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes on joy.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. Helen Keller

Joy is an inward singing that cannot be silenced by outward negative circumstances.  Yes, even when life is seemingly falling apart. Robert D. Foster

Joy is the standard that flies on the battlements of the heart when the King is in residence. R. Leonard Small

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the LORD, for He comes, He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His truth. Psalm 96:11 – 13

These are some trees in our backyard forest that have recently begun to sing for joy:

And here is the the Hallelujah Chorus warming up right outside our kitchen window:

I believe one day we’ll see that most of God’s creation speaks to Him and of Him at all times. Today as I think on how much I want joy to be the undercurrent of my life, our trees remind me to rejoice.

If trees can sing for joy, so can I.

The house I have lived in longer than any other house will go on the market tomorrow. We moved out of it in March of this year and have been slowly getting it ready to sell for a while. It needed some paint touch-ups and Michael decided to sheet rock closets and paint the basement walls and floor too. Now in the current economic crisis, it seems like it will take a miracle to sell our beloved old house. 

My mom was a compulsive mover, and I am not. I am a compulsive stayer. My mom lived in thirty-seven homes in her lifetime, always looking for a place that would make her happy.  I, on the other hand, always feel that change will ruin things, and that if I could only stay put I would be content. Nevertheless we finally moved to a different house three miles away, and each day the new place is beginning to feel a little more like home.

I lived in my first house from birth to age three. The next one was from my third until my fifteenth year. Then my mom and I lived six months in an apartment. Then one year in a house. Then one year in another house, when my Grandma moved in with us. Then one year in another house, after Grandma decided to move back to Kansas City. Then at age eighteen I got married and lived for six months in a three room trailer on the banks of Yuba River in Smartville, CA. Then we lived for two years in base housing at Beale AFB, then on to Germany we went, where we lived almost two years in two houses. At age twenty-two I found myself divorced, and my two little girls and I returned to Southern California where we lived in three places in two years. When I was nearly twenty-four years old I married Michael, a native Minnesotan, and moved to American Siberia. Our first house was a cute rental and we were there three years. Then we bought our own home in a quiet neighborhood not far from Lake Superior – a dumpy Victorian, built in 1895, with good bones and lots of potential, and we stayed for just under twenty-four years. I lived in that old house from age twenty-seven until I was fifty years old.

I cried on the day we moved in to that place because it needed so much work and I had no vision. “I can make this a nice home”, Michael assured me. “Tell me what you don’t like and I’ll change it.” And over the course of that twenty-four years, my talented and hard-working husband tore down every bit of old plaster and lathe, and sheet rocked and taped every wall and ceiling. He tore down walls, made two smaller rooms into a huge kitchen. He replaced all windows but one. He put a two bedroom addition on the house. He built a half bath on the main floor. He enlarged the full bath on the second floor. He roofed the house, he sided it. He installed soffit and fascia. He put up crown moulding. He jacked up the two-car garage and tore out the old slab, pouring a new slab and extending the garage to hold four cars (or actually, two cars and all his boy-toys and other stuff). He built two decks. He did so much more than I am listing here. He transformed that raggedy old first house into a place I truly loved, a place where we raised daughters, had our first, second, third and fourth dogs, held Bible studies and welcomed friends for dinner, laughed and cried and rested and home schooled and dreamed and prayed and hoped and lived.

And now the for sale sign will go up in the front yard tomorrow. Today I spent a few hours at the old house getting it in ready-to-show condition, doing the final paint touch ups, cleaning the bathrooms and scrubbing the floors, snipping off the stalks of the old hosta blooms in the yard, and carting out the final few odds and ends still there. It felt like such a momentous closure to lock the door and drive away.

The twenty-four years we spent in that charming house with the round window on the third story, were years that shaped my life in ways I’ll never forget. Thank you, Lord, for all that you blessed us with there, all you helped us with. Thank you for giving us a home.

I just read a book I loved called Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller. It’s a series of topical essays by a very funny, candid Christian man whose political beliefs are not my own, but that doesn’t matter to me. I laughed out loud and cried a lot while reading this book, and one section moved me so profoundly I knew I wanted to share about it. I was going to actually quote one paragraph from the book, and naturally give credit to Donald Miller, but when I emailed Thomas Nelson Publishers just to make sure I was doing it right, they promptly wrote back and said I couldn’t quote the paragraph at all. Even though it would have been a glowing blog post, I can’t quote it word for word. So that means I have to convey what the paragraph in the book said, using my own words to retell it, and, loquacious person that I am, it might not be as concise. But it’s worth the telling, I think.

Apparently a friend of Donald Miller’s, a man named Alan, decided to go around the country and interview the heads of big ministries, to find out why they were doing what they were doing, and what made their ministries so successful. This didn’t sound very interesting to the author of Blue Like Jazz until his friend started talking about the part where he sat down with Dr. Bill Bright, former head of Campus Crusade for Christ. Alan said that Dr. Bright met with him to answer questions, and always looked him in the eye when he responded. At the end of the interview, Alan concluded by asking him, “What does Jesus mean to you?” And he said that this large, powerful man who sat behind a large desk as the founding president of a huge and effective ministry, couldn’t answer. Dr. Bright’s eyes filled up with tears and he began to cry.

Donald Miller was deeply moved that someone would love Jesus so much, that just to hear the mention of His name would make him weep. He wondered if Dr. Bright was either a fruit nut or someone who knew Jesus so well that it was all he could do to keep it together when he thought of what Christ meant to him.

Donald Miller wrote that he would like to love Jesus like that too. He mused that knowing Jesus so intimately and loving Him so utterly might just be the key to something.

I can’t get this out of my mind.

This is a typical breakfast at any inn or bed and breakfast in Great Britain. We ate approximately 10 of these when Michael and I traveled to Ireland, Scotland and England in January of 2007. There is bacon, ham with thick white fat around the edges, a very moist mound of unsalted scrambled eggs, a grilled toe-mah-toe, a deep-fried triangle of bread, a giant sausage, and the black blob in the middle of the plate is Yorkshire pudding. Missing from this particular meal at The Nag’s Head Inn in Pickhill, Yorkshire, England, were the grilled mushrooms and the bland beans that were served with breakfast everywhere else we stayed. Toast is always served cold in little racks (see top of photo), and there was usually yogurt, fruit and occasionally cereal if we wanted (we didn’t). Don’t forget the porridge (oatmeal in the little covered white bowls), the ubiquitous Typhoo tea, orange juice and coffee. We drove a leisurely 1004 miles in 10 days in a rented Vauxhall Vectra and had some memorable adventures. But because we were almost daily served a Full English breakfast, we were never hungry enough to stop for lunch.

He doesn’t say so, but I think Michael would like me to make him a Full English breakfast every morning (without the tomato).  I’m not planning to do this anytime soon, because I love him and would like him around for as long as possible.

I remember getting up to go to the bathroom right before dawn about a year ago.  The reason I remember this particular morning is because as I was sitting there in the dark, looking out of the bathroom window toward the eastern sky, I saw a very bright light. Everything is a blur without my glasses, so I thought it was a large plane, close to flying over my house on its way to the airport. I waited for the plane to come closer so I could hear it go by, but it stayed put and I never heard a sound. The light was huge and low in the sky, so I retrieved my glasses and went again to the bathroom window, where I could then clearly see that it was a star or a planet like I’d never observed before. I went downstairs to look up online what I was seeing, and learned it was the planet Venus, at least 26 million miles from us. Standing there at five in the morning and gazing at this heavenly sphere, my thoughts turned to God. And I felt something I’ve been experiencing more often as I get older: a longing, a difficult-to-describe yearning, an intangible ache that comes in an instant, like a stab, and then it’s gone.

There are other things that have brought on this longing, and I wonder if any of you will relate.

Certain music, with haunting melodies, brings a subtle yearning.  Wind chimes barely touching in the breeze.  The way some authors can put words together has made me feel that pang.  Brilliant autumn leaves.  God’s Word, prayerfully and humbly read.  Looking at the night sky and meditating on its vastness, and knowing God is so much bigger.

My grandchildren often evoke an indescribable sweet ache in my heart. It feels like wonderful joy, and it feels like pain.

When my husband and I visited Scotland a while back, the ancient heather hills and the lonely sound of bagpipes seemed to call to something deep inside me; I wanted to fall to my knees and weep, but I didn’t know why.

One characteristic about the fleeting sense of these longings, is that you can’t duplicate them if you try. Maybe tomorrow the same drive up the shore of Lake Superior or the same view of Venus won’t bring that same feeling back.

Have you ever longed for something, for someone at times, and you can’t quite put your finger on what you’re yearning for, and then it’s gone? Do you sometimes grow restless even when everything is going well? Do you ever get the sense that something you’re hearing, something you’re observing, has a meaning much bigger than the moment, but you can’t say exactly what it is?  You’re not alone.  And if you’re a Christian – if you have surrendered your life to Jesus – I believe that ache, that longing, has been put there by God. It’s a reminder from Him to us, that this earthly life isn’t all there is.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 

My Bible notes on this say “this verse means we can never be completely satisfied with earthly pleasures or pursuits”.

He has set eternity in our hearts. There’s something always there, something that feels like we’re being strummed by a huge, unseen hand, some sort of chord that’s being struck in our souls. Like a distant bell is being sounded, and a tiny bell in our own soul answers. At times it’s a thrill, and often it’s a little painful.

Sometimes it’s the passage of time that makes us aware of this pang. We run into an old acquaintance after ten years and are shocked that her children are ten years older and that her hair has begun to turn grey. How did this happen? Why are we surprised at time and why do we feel that longing as the years go quickly by? Could it be because we are eternal beings temporarily confined by time?

C.S. Lewis describes this phenomenon in one of my favorite quotes:

“If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (‘How time flies! Fancy John being grown up and married! I can hardly believe it!’) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something about us that is not temporal.”

I’m convinced that some people feel this longing deeply, but try to quiet it or squash it because it can be uncomfortable. I think I’ve tried to silence this vague yearning or to fill it in ways that have not served me well. Some might choose alcohol or busyness or spending money or control to silence this longing we all feel. Or we might pressure our friends or spouses to fill that yearning in us, which of course is futile, because a human or a substance or an activity can’t ease a yearning that God has put in us to remind us that we’re pilgrims here, only passing through.

Psalm 63:1: O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

I think our whole beings long for what only He can give us. Even when God has lavished us with kindness and blessings untold, deep inside we know there’s more. And we long for it. Even those who haven’t acknowledged God, have felt this yearning and can’t identify what, exactly, they’re aching for.

My husband and I bought a new house recently, and I have endeavored to pick just the right paint colors for the kitchen, three of the bathrooms, five of the bedrooms, the living room, the garage door, the laundry area, the office and even the outside shutters. Many times I spread out the entire fan of several hundreds of paint chip colors and still thought to myself, “This can’t be all the colors there are – there have to be more colors than this! I just can’t find the colors I want.” And then this verse from 1 Corinthians 2:9 came to mind:

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

I believe there are colors in heaven that we don’t have here – colors no eye has yet seen. I think there will be musical notes and sounds in heaven that we don’t have here – songs no ear has yet heard.

And once in a while, God seems to part a veil to give us a momentary glimpse of those beauties and joys that await. And then in a flash it’s gone. And we feel that longing, that yearning, that deep ache.

He’s a loving and generous God, and when we consider His creation and His Son, we can know this about Him: He loves beauty, and He is generous and patient and merciful. But in His wisdom, I don’t believe He allows us to be completely satisfied here on earth. He gives us just enough of what we need to learn to love Him and depend on Him while we’re here, but He often gives us those transient glimpses of eternity to help us to set our hearts on minds on Him, not on the things of this earth. 

While He’s pouring out His abundance and help and correction and grace and instruction on us here, He frequently reminds us of what is yet to come. While we can have His peace through Jesus now, deeper peace is coming, and while we can know His joy today, more joy is around that eternal corner. We live in mere shadows of what will someday be true and glorious substance.

So even though I still sometimes sob when that veil is pulled back and I sense that horribly wonderful and ephemeral ache, I’m beginning to rest more in what I believe it is.  I will never be truly at home here.  My Lord is good to remind me of that. He helps me to live in this very beautiful and painful place, and lifts my chin now and then and whispers to me of the Place where all boredom, confusion and pain will forever cease, and my longings and yearnings will be completely fulfilled.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
       Why so disturbed within me?
       Put your hope in God,
       for I will yet praise him,
       my Savior and my God.                

Psalm 42:11 (NIV)

Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?
      Why are you crying the blues?
   Fix my eyes on God—
      soon I’ll be praising again.
   He puts a smile on my face.
      He’s my God.                                    

Psalm 42:11 (The Message)

Today my friend Carey took me out to lunch. And gave me some beautiful, elegant earrings that she made herself. And gave me a book she loved, which means I will love it. And a card that made me laugh, which assured me that if Carey ever got caught at the dry cleaners wearing a giant chicken costume and had to run into someone she knew there, she would want it to be me. That’s how close she feels to me.  And since one of Carey’s many gifts is baking, she brought me an entire Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cake with a ganache frosting. With fresh raspberries on top, and mint leaves picked from her own garden.

When I brought home my whole Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cake with a ganache frosting and raspberries and mint leaves, my husband Michael took one look and started salivating.  So I decided to let him have the first piece.  I sliced it for him and watched him enjoy it with a glass of cold milk and half closed eyes.

After dinner we each had a piece, and there were moans all around.