Where Sorrow and Joy Meet

“Only when we keep our lives in a constant posture of worship do sorrow and joy mingle together for a purpose we can’t always see in the moment.”

“But as for me—poor and in pain—let your salvation protect me, God. I will praise God’s name with song
and exalt him with thanksgiving” (Psalm 69:29-30 CSB) 

This is a longer post. It’s a tough one. A deeply personal one. I want to talk about grief. It’s so very tangible. For those of you who have walked in it, you feel it. You know it. It wraps around you, not like the warmth of a blanket, but like the suffocating pressure of a million chains. It’s so heavy to carry. What I have learned in this last year of personal grief after losing my precious stepmom to Covid is that sorrow and joy can somehow coexist. I have always secretly feared that I wouldn’t be able to proclaim this when it came time. I have always thought that sorrow would likely be all-encompassing. I have worried it could totally consume me, ravaging my faith and causing me to question God’s goodness. And some days it truly threatened this if I had succumbed to Satan’s lies. 

But do you know what else is tangible? God’s goodness. Joy. Peace. And these aren’t conditional. They are who He is. There can be purpose in our grief.

I have watched in awe, and if I am honest, I have watched in fear, as people express joy in the midst of suffering. It is of course admirable, increasing my own faith to watch this paradox as a spectator, but it has also convicted me time and time again. I have secretly doubted whether I could stand up under the weight of loss and proclaim that God is good- even if. Even if the healing doesn’t come. Even if my prayers aren’t answered. Even if the result is pain. How in the world could I ever expect to face REAL heartache and respond with thanksgiving? 

I encourage you to go read all of Psalm 69. David is heartbroken and pain ridden. He is sinking in the depths of sorrow and death. It seems to surround him. He feels as though he is drowning in it. Oh, I feel this. His voice is weary from crying out, seemingly with no response. His eyes fail him, looking for the Lord. 

While his voice becomes weak, his spirit does not. 

David brings all of his heart-wrenching honesty before the Lord. This is so comforting to me. The Father isn’t scared of our honesty. He isn’t offended by our truest expression of sorrow and pain. He isn’t surprised by it either.  Here is the incredible part: by the end of the psalm, David responds with a heart of worship. With thanks. With glorifying the Father. And this isn’t because his problems are solved or because the pain is gone. He makes the conscious decision to PRAISE God with his song and to exalt Him regardless. He even calls on all of heaven and earth to join him in this song of worship. 

Pain and joy exist together somehow in the context of worship. In the presence of God, we can bring our pain and offer it up to Him in honesty as David does in this psalm and in many others. It becomes a sacrifice, an offering. As we recall His faithfulness, as we redirect our gaze, our hearts are filled with gratefulness for all of the ways He has been faithful. Our hands lift, we bow, and we rid ourselves of the heavy chains. Only there, bowed low in front of our King, are we able to release the sorrow and exchange it for unthinkable joy. Only when we keep our lives in a constant posture of worship do sorrow and joy mingle together for a purpose we can’t always see in the moment. Only when the Lord is in His rightful place in our heart, only when our eyes are fixed on the author and perfector of our faith, do we have sight (Hebrews 12:2a).

We see this in the life of Jesus, too. As he readies himself to bear the cross, He begs God for another way. He pleads and prays in agony to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, much like I have done so many times in the garden of my own desperation. Go check out this scene in the gospels and you will hear His desperation. It is comforting to know that the very Son of God begged for another way, a way around pain, but more importantly, a way around being momentarily separated from His Father because of my sin. Ultimately, we also see in Hebrews 12:2, as an act of worship and submission to His father, and “for the JOY that lay before him, he endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2b). For the JOY that would come. Jesus wanted the will of the Father more than He wanted to avoid the crucifixion. Jesus knew what was on the other side, and pain somehow intertwined with JOY. One can stem from the other. Our worship of the One who gives and takes away is the only avenue to this peace. His presence makes the difference.

“But as for me, God’s presence is my good.”  (Psalm 73:28a)

I want to end with sharing one part of the tangible goodness. I am writing this on the morning after my precious 8-year-old boy, Parker, received Jesus as his Savior on the couch in our living room. Parker began this journey a little over a year ago after the death of my stepmom, affectionately known by him as “Happy.” He began asking a series of questions about death and eternity. It was brutal to introduce my son to these concepts amid my own grief. It hurt so deeply. I never tried to hide my tears from him. He saw the sorrow, and he felt his own. But I did strive to model for him the hope I have in Jesus.  He saw hope, too, even on days I don’t feel that I displayed it very well. Even on days that my voice shook and my throat was parched like David’s, I tried (and failed many times) to make the conscious decision to praise the Lord with my song. I knew that her death would be a part of Parker’s salvation story. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we “…do not have an enduring city here; instead, we seek the [city] to come…” He further encourages us to “…continually offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name” (Hebrews 13:14-15 CSB). Some days, worship truly did feel like a sacrifice. Some days, it just didn’t come easily. But I am now more certain than ever that nothing, absolutely nothing, is wasted in the hands of my Lord. Even grief. 

Amazingly, this devastating death served as a catalyst for life- eternal life. Incredibly, God brought about His goodness in it. It’s what He does- He redeems what is lost and what is hopeless. He turns ashes into beauty. He turns mourning into joy, tangible joy.

I will always carry a sense of loss in my heart. I will forever and always miss my stepmom, who was truly my bonus mom. But now, I have peace that the loss isn’t all there is. Death has lost its sting in the victory of Jesus! I can look back now and see God’s hand there all along, even on my darkest days of sorrow, even on the days He felt so distant. I can see Him, mending the tattered pieces and orchestrating what only He can- goodness out of grief. Joy out of sorrow.