Choosing Joy Amid Pain

The LORD is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes. He is close to those who trust in him.

I recently read through a journal I kept in the year leading up to my sister’s death. It was hard to revisit. She suffered fractures in her cancer-weakened bones, a fall while in a public setting, debilitating pain, and countless hospital stays.

I’d forgotten a lot of those details. But as I worked my way through the heartbreaking entries, I realized that I had forgotten a lot of the good stuff too.

One of the entries detailed the encouragement she received in a single week. She’d gotten a phone call from a woman at a local church who said that during the pastor’s message on trust the previous Sunday, he had read Katrina’s latest email as people cried for a stranger.

And at the hospital that Saturday, when the nurse in the emergency room found out who Kate was, she asked the other nurses to leave the room. She explained that her sister attended the same church my sister did.

“I’ve been praying for you for five years,” she said. She then asked if she could pray with my sister in the ER. Together, they joined hands over her hospital bed.

The journal was full of stories of God’s goodness amid difficulties: the women in Katrina’s MOPS group who dropped off countless meals, the church member who offered to clean her house weekly, the friends who watched her kids—one woman even bought my niece and nephew Christmas presents—and the hundreds of people on her email list who prayed for someone they had never met. And those weren’t a fraction of the stories she could have shared. Though Katrina experienced daily pain, she chose joy as often as possible. She believed that God had the strength to be her refuge, come what may.

Although not all of us receive a life-altering diagnosis, we all experience difficulties in which we find ourselves living in the tension between joy and pain. Yet we can take comfort in the knowledge that even if we don’t experience healing or resolution on this earth, there is still goodness to be found. Pain exists. But so does joy. And regardless of what we face, God is still good.

Kristin

Today’s Act of Gratitude

Think of a time in your life when you experienced both joy and pain. Thank God for his faithfulness during that season.