My fingers tremble as I look for the words to type.  My eyes are heavy and swollen from all the tears, and my lip still quivers in anticipation of the next wave of emotion.  How do you save a life?  How do you bring someone back from the edge?  How do you rewrite the circumstances that swallowed their hope?  How do you bring hope?

 

At this point, I’m unsure who I am speaking to. I’m unsure if it’s God, man, or self that I desire to capture the attention of, but I release it anyway.  Curled up in a ball on the couch, I release my woes and hope for responses.

 

A song playing in the background nags at my spirit.  Words about the valley of the shadow of death ricochet in the room around me as stinging anger and confusion pain every crevice of my broken heart.

 

My body hurts, my spirit is tired, and my soul is so very weary.

 

How am I supposed to bring hope when my hope seems to be diminished?

 

Feelings continue to flood in, seemingly overtaking my will.  I don’t feel like I can fight them, but the logical part of me says that I can.  I am always in control. I have a say.  I have a choice.

 

But in this particular moment, confronted with the nagging choice of choosing joy or choosing to dwell in the pain that I’m feeling, I’m unsure if I’ll choose joy.  I’m undecided if I’ll choose hope.

 

When without, I cannot begin to fathom being with.

 

When I am without, I cannot envision a place or a time when I will again be with whatever I have lost.

 

Verses bounce around in the abyss of my heart, echoing over and over as my hollowed walls seem to fold in. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance,” one says.  “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit,” inserts another.  One last verse shouts to grab my attention: “Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

 

My heart knows the good news held in those words.  My soul recognizes its desperate need for encouragement and so it reminds me of the truth found in the Word.  My spirit craves it, but my flesh remains in sorrow.

 

And I feel defeated because of it.

 

It raises a question in me:

 

When I am without, why am I without?

 

Currently, I am sitting on my cousin’s living room floor with the gentle morning light pouring in through the closed shades.  Tears escaping my eyes at the recognition of the death that surrounds me— death of people, relationships, and hope.  There seems to be no way out.

 

There seems to be no way to find joy.

 

But there is.  There always is.

 

Those verses tell me there is.

 

Experience tells me there is.

 

The sweet whisper of a Father tells me there is.

 

So why am I without?

 

Why am I lacking right now?

 

Where has my joy gone; why has hope left me?  Why does peace evade me and where is the overwhelming love of the Father in this moment?

 

When I am without, why am I going without?

 

Flesh argues one way, but the Spirit argues another.

 

My flesh tells me that God has abandoned me or that the enemy is overtaking the battlefield.  My old self hurls lewd and blasphemous remarks that joy is impossible, and that Jesus set the standard too high for a mortal like me to achieve.

 

I know that my flesh is wrong, but it dignifies my victim mentality, so I long to believe it.

 

I want to believe that I can’t choose joy or hope or peace, because then, my circumstances would be about what was done to me and not what I have done to myself.

 

But the truth is that I can.  I can choose joy.  I can choose hope.  I can choose peace.  I don’t have to be without any of those things— I can choose to seek them out.

 

My heart immediately is sobered by the remembrance of my sweet aunt Cindy.

 

The night after she lost her daughter, I went over to her house.  My cousin and I went to be with her and support her.  We lost a cousin, but she lost her beloved daughter.  I felt useless, pitiful, and clueless.  Years of counseling others in loss hadn’t prepared me for the heartbreak that was in the room.

 

A mattress had been pulled into the middle of the living room and my aunt rocked back and forth on it crying for her baby. Weeping, and mourning filled the room and the hearts of everyone there.

 

My aunt cried for her daughter and we all cried alongside her.  We shared stories and pondered the circumstances surrounding us all.  We laughed some but we cried a lot more.

 

Cindy cried and cried and cried for her lost love.  My heart broke in front of me, and I cried too.  Everyone in the room was crying for one reason or another.

 

I found myself crying for Madison and her lost life.  I cried for her brother, her mother,  her father, her grandparents and all the rest of my family that was wrecked by the hole that she left when she died.  I cried for the situation and I cried for how it played out.  I cried some just thinking about my own brothers and what I would do if they were no longer around.

 

I cried on and off for varying reasons, but I cried the most for my grieving aunt.

 

I watched grief swallow her in confusion and anger, worry and pain.  Rocking back and forth, back, and forth, she cried out towards heaven in that dimly lit living room.  She didn’t understand.  She couldn’t process what was happening.  She was a mother that had just lost a daughter.

 

But in that, I saw something extraordinary.

 

Sitting in a den of sadness, I saw my aunt, brave and strong in the face of so much pain, choose joy.

 

She cried for the Holy Spirit until He came.  She cried for understanding until it descended on her like a dove. She asked for peace until her spirit garnered the peace of the Lord.  Repeatedly, she begged Jesus to come.  Repeatedly, she asked for the Holy Spirit to give her perspective.  Repeatedly, she recited His truth and waited for more to come.

 

Her bravery amid overwhelming adversity moved me.  Her tenacity in what could have been her unraveling, changed my heart.  She humbled me and she had no idea.

 

She was presented with something that could have destroyed her, and it might have, but she didn’t give up and give into it.

 

It wasn’t that my aunt was not lacking– she had just lost her daughter.  But she didn’t let what she didn’t have keep her from asking for more.

 

On a night that she was without, she asked to be with.

 

When lacking something and going without, she simply asked for it to be given to her.

 

So, when without, why am I without?

 

The answer to my question is not that God has abandoned me or that satan has won; the answer to my question is that I am without because I quit trying to live with.

 

That night, we were in the Upper Room.  We were a family, both in blood and in belief, united for one cause: Jesus.  Death had claimed one of our own, and in mourning, we joined together.  We joined, my aunt cried for the Holy Spirit, and when He came, He came to the entire room.

 

That room was no longer a dungeon of doubt and despair: it was elevated to the rooftops of heaven and turned into a place where the spirit of the Lord roamed freely.  Because my aunt chose what seemed impossible to choose and waited until it came, we all experienced the Lord.

 

Because of one woman’s actions, a room full of people reaped a reward.

 

We received healing that night because of Cindy.  We experienced the tangible touch of the Holy Spirit because of Cindy.  We touched heaven and saw hope face to face because she chose the impossible.

 

When she couldn’t feel joy, she asked for it.  When she couldn’t find peace in her own understanding, she asked for the Lord’s.  Repeatedly she cried for the Holy Spirit to come, until He did.

 

She didn’t give up.  She never gave up.  When she was without, she begged for what she needed.

 

Her boldness gave me insight into the Word that I never had before.

 

In Nehemiah 8, we are instructed to “be not grieved and depressed, for the joy of the Lord is your strength and stronghold.”  We are encouraged to remember the joy of the Lord in our sorrow and to use that joy as a stronghold to hold onto in those  times of depression and lack.

 

When a group of us gathered in loss, joy didn’t come because we bullied ourselves into being joyful: it came by asking the Lord— the Creator, Inventor and Originator of joy— to come and bestow it on us.

 

“Holy Spirit come,” Cindy cried over and over again. She knew that God and God alone could offer peace and understanding and joy.  She knew, so she asked.

 

She asked repeatedly until it came.

 

She asked, it came, and we were all blessed with joy.

 

The key to living in fullness isn’t never having lack, rather, the key is to ask for fullness until you have it.

 

Do you lack joy?  Ask for joy.

 

Do you lack righteousness?  Ask for righteousness.

 

Do you lack peace?  Ask for peace.

 

When I lack confidence, I ask for encouragements.  When I lack understanding, I ask for explanations.  Even in this broken world, when I am in need and when I am going without something, I simply ask for it and it is given to me.

 

How much more does a Heavenly Father with unlimited resources have to give to me?

 

So, grieve not, dear child, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

 

You might be lacking it.  You might have to ask for it.  You might have it and then lose it and have to ask for it all over again, but if you ask, you will receive.

 

In your lack, ask for more.  Even if you must keep asking like my aunt did, ask.  Even if you have no hope that it will materialize into anything, ask.  In loss, ask for gain.  In pain, ask for healing.  In despair, ask for freedom.  At the end of the day, all you have do is ask.