Choosing Gratitude, Finding Joy

  God delights in turning our hardest places into platforms of praise from which we declare His goodness to the world. 

   Not all stories begin or end the way we assume they will. Sometimes the trajectory of our lives takes on an entirely different course than we had anticipated.

So it was when Dustin, our oldest child, and much prayed-for baby was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3. To say my faith was shaken and my world turned upside down is an understatement, but it was never stretched more thinly than when I began homeschooling our children.

Obviously having a child on the spectrum added many challenges to our homeschooling journey. For the first half year one of our *bonus girls taught Desirèe while I worked with Dustin. This worked for a little while. Desirèe learned to read with very little effort and generally flew through her school work. Braden, our third child was a different story. He was sharp as a tack and brilliant with math but had a very difficult time learning to read. Only later, when he was in 4th grade and reading well, did I realize that he is mildly dyslexic. So I took over teaching while Caitlyn (another one of our bonus girls) stayed home every winter to teach Dustin. She will never fully know how much that saved me. Even I didn’t realize it until later. 

*bonus girls= older teen girls who joined our family when they were in need of one.

But the time came for Caitlyn to move on. She had dreams and aspirations and I knew I couldn’t keep her with me forever. Honestly, I had no idea how I would manage, but I knew God was nudging me to step out in faith for her good. We did not have the financial bandwidth to hire anyone to help and so I told the Lord it was up to Him to keep me sane and help me out.  

   I won’t lie, the first year was rough. Dustin required constant one-on-one, I was teaching Adelynn through CLE’s Learning to Read, Braden was in 3rd grade but still needed help reading instructions and Desirée was running into trouble with 5th grade math. 

The second year was even harder. Dustin had hit puberty and was shooting upward faster than his pant legs could keep up with. Hardest of all was the pent up frustration he couldn’t seem to control. My pleasant, good-natured son vanished and with it, peace in our schoolroom. I don’t know how many times the children stood by watching as their here-to-fore gentle brother screamed, banged his head, bit and threw things, while I did the only thing I knew left to do; wrestle him to the floor and sit on him until he calmed down and quit trying to take a chunk out of my arm. That entire school year felt like a failure. We didn’t do flashcards. Addie quit halfway through the year because I didn’t have time to help her, Desirèe muddled through her math and Braden miraculously turned into a reader but received very little help with his atrocious spelling. 

All my energy and focus was going into their brother and I had never felt more helpless, exhausted and hopeless in my life. I love teaching. I do not love feeling like a failure. Challenges have never scared me but this one was getting the best of me. But in all this, the meltdowns, the ungraded light units, the barely keeping tabs on education, I knew this one thing, God wanted to hear me sing through these years of letting go. Expectations, education, the right to “normal,” all of these surrendered to the God who knew what He was about when I did not. 

God loves to hear our praise

On our cheerful days

When the pleasant times

Outweigh the bad, by far

But when suffering comes along

And we still sing Him songs

That is when we bless the Father’s heart.

God wants to hear you sing

When the waves are crashing ’round you

When the fiery darts surround you

When despair is all you see

God wants to hear your voice

When the wisest man has spoken

And says, ‘Your circumstance

Is as hopeless as can be”

That’s when God wants to hear you sing. ~Rodney Griffin

So many days ended in a good cry on the couch after every one else was in bed, but every single time, God met me there and my faith in His goodness grew until I could not doubt that somehow, somewhere He was going to use this for His glory and my good. And in one of my toughest times, He gave me these words;

God,  You are faithful and true,

Your word stands steadfast, unmoved. 

On cloudy days

Still all Your ways

Are filled with goodness and grace. 

And in Your presence, my safe place,

I hear your whisper

And I rejoice

For I know that each piece of this story 

Are for my good and for Your glory.

When I can’t see Your hand in this,

When the sands beneath me shift,

Still I will say, 

“God, all Your ways

Are filled with goodness and light

And though I may, in my blindness,

See but in part

Still I trust Your heart; 

For I know that each piece of this story 

Are for my good and for Your glory.

Entitlement and unrealistic expectations are joy killers.

  Western society has been conditioned to believe that difficulty equates negative.. We are inundated by messages insisting that if it does’t feel good, it must be bad;  that suffering is an enemy, and hard things are to be avoided at all costs. It is amazing how easily the onslaught of self-care messages can wiggle their way into our thinking until we subconsciously accept fragments of it. “I can’t handle this…” or,  “I deserve…” You fill in the blanks. 

As Christians, we know the Bible says things like, “all things work together for good,” but like C.S. Lewis so aptly pointed out, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

The truth is, none of us love difficulty. The lengths to which humanity will go to in order to be comfortable is truly astonishing. And while a few of us enjoy physical exertion and sweat inducing challenges, none of us love pain, nor are we eagerly anticipating the next hard thing life is about to throw our way. If however, instead of approaching motherhood/ homeschooling/life with the expectation of relatively smooth sailing, we anticipate the kinds of storms that grow our faith, increase our capacity for struggle and teach us new skills, we will neither be surprised, nor shaken when such storms inevitably arise.

A perspective shift; hard is not the same thing as bad.

Abbie Halberstadt, in her book “M is for Mama” may have coined this phrase, but it is far from a new idea.

I have never done anything harder in my life than teaching Dustin to zip his jacket and button his shirt. I cannot tell you how often I literally bit my tongue to keep the hot impatience in my heart from exploding out of my mouth as I tediously showed him how complete some menial chore, over and over and over again. Yet, leaning into the hard thing instead of giving up, worked only good in my heart and increased Dustin’s abilities exponentially. 

People have often said things like, “You are such a patient person.” 

“ You are the perfect mom for Dustin.” 

“God sure knew what He was doing when He made you Dustin’s mama.” 

Yes, God did indeed know what He was doing, but believe me when I tell you I am absolutely not a patient person by nature and whatever patience seen in me is grace, upon grace upon grace. God used that little boy to sanctify my goal-oriented, confident self into someone entirely dependant on Himself. 

I was not cut out to be a special-need’s mom. Nothing about my personality or gifting finds it natural to slow down and then slow down some more. To teach the same monotonous skill set, day in and day out, month after tedious month with sketchy visible results, is the worst kind of nightmare my younger self could have imagined. I don’t even enjoy teaching the 1st and 2nd grades. I can safely say that out loud now, since my youngest is in 4th grade, lol!) It bores my brain into a perfect lethargy. How much more so when doing speech therapy for 12 years and counting? Or trying to get a child with poorly developed fine motor skills to use clothespins. 

But here’s the flip side. 

God DID know what He was doing when He made me Dustin’s mama. Not because I was the perfect mom for him, but because Dustin was the perfect person to lead me to Jesus, broken, bleeding, insufficient and entirely dependant on God’s overwhelming grace. God knew I needed Dustin to make me slow down and teach me how to trust the heart of God even when everything went wrong from my perspective. 

God knew I needed Dustin to show me that living joyfully is dependent not on my circumstances but on my surrender. 

You see, the measure of joy we experience in life has nothing to do with our circumstances and absolutely everything to do with our surrender to Sovereign God. Of course our circumstances may make it more difficult to rejoice, but in the end we find that joy born on the wings of difficulty is a joy that is unhindered by the tempests of life.

And here we find, we are presented with a choice; the choice to use our difficulties as a platform for praise or a soap-box for venting complaints. One will lead us into fullness of joy, the other will leave us convinced of your own victimhood. 

One says, “this is hard, therefore I will rejoice.” The other laments, “this is hard, therefore I am to be pitied.” One is joy, the other is misery. 

 Let’s look at a few thought patterns that encourage negative thinking and rob us of joy.

-selfishness. The bane of human existence. The world is full of voices telling us we need to love ourselves, and listen, I know there are cases of severe abuse where children sincerely believe they would be doing their parents a favour if they disappeared from the face of the earth. These cases are tragic. but in general, most people do not need to be encouraged to love themselves. We do this naturally. It may hide behind a veneer of self-hatred, but we are all hard-wired to think of ourselves first and everyone else last. 

 –behaving like a door mat. For example, we can’t say no. We must always be doing for God and others but our doing is done with an inner sigh of, “who else will do it?” This can be born of an unhealthy compulsion to “be the best” or by commitments made because of a misplaced sense of guilt, and not the leading of the Holy Spirit. 

 –a skewed view of God’s sovereignty. When we believe that God is sovereign in order to “fix things” we will feel like a victim of His displeasure when we face mountains that won’t move even a centimetre, no matter how much we pray. 

When we believe that God is sovereign in order save to the uttermost, we can trustingly place our hand in His and say, “Your will be done.” Not with a bleak sigh of, “My life is doomed from henceforth forevermore,” but with the glad surrender of one who knows the protective care of a good God. 

–Unmet expectations/entitlement. We are much happier when we keep our expectations of what life owes us at a zero, not with a boat load of self-pity attached, but with a heart of genuine gratitude for the many, many gifts none of us deserve but are freely given. This enables us to rejoice in all the little things we might otherwise miss because our hearts are tuned toward praise and not our frustrated expectations. 

-the comparison game. Nothing robs us of joy faster than when we fall victim to our own unmet expectations that are based, not on what God has called us to, but what others will think of us. (at least what we tell ourselves others will think. From my experience, people are usually much more generous in their thoughts toward us than we give them credit for.) Attempting to imitate someone else’s giftings rather than appreciating how God created us, is not only an insult to our Creator, but is a burden none of us were ever meant to carry. 

 –the assumption that hard is always bad. If our expectation of life is that it will be a cozy Pinterest board of coordinated colors and soothing ambiance, we will be fighting self pity at every bend of the road. If our expectation of marriage is connecting hearts over cups of coffee every morning of the year and ending the day snuggled on the couch, talking and drinking tea, we will be severely disappointed.

 The truth is, unless we live a very self-centred lifestyle, none of these will be our daily reality. 

 Don’t get me wrong, I believe in creating restful ambiance, soul-inspiring beauty and delicious slices of cake served up on the back porch whenever possible. These things fill a womanly part of us that God created. But to rely on these experiences for joy will leave us feeling deprived during hard seasons, and is a set up for failure. 

So what do we do if we find ourselves caught in a web of unmet expectations, self pity, and joyless survival?  We begin by taking every thought captive to obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (Disclaimer; we are not speaking of clinical depression, but rather discouragement.)

Dr. Caroline Leaf says, “While our brains are wired for love, we naturally gravitate toward negativity.” This is true. Our brains are instinctively lazy and will always take the path of least resistance. 

A number of years ago a friend dropped his dog off at our house, hoping to have her bred with our black German Shepherd. That dog had a screw loose in her brain, and by the time she left I felt like I might be missing a few as well. She ran laps around our house, over and over and over again, until, by the end of the first day, there was a clear path worn into the grass. And then, guess what happened? Our intelligent, very sensible dog, who did not have a screw loose, started running around the house, following the path Bella had made.

We create neurological pathways in our brain in much the same way. Our thoughts create a path and that path becomes the way of least resistance. This leads to a pattern of thought we quickly become entrenched in. If our thoughts are edifying, and upbuilding this is a wonderful thing, but if we have fallen into a habit of not taking our thoughts captive, if we have allowed pathways to form in our brain that keep pulling us toward the negative, we are in trouble. 

Negative thoughts begin with hurt and frustrated expectations. Left unchecked, they will always morph into critical thoughts toward the people or person who hurt us, and critical thoughts lead to contempt. 

For example, what began as one negative thought toward someone, if left unchecked, will soon have you noticing every annoying idiosyncrasy and undesirable habit in that person’s life. Before you know it, you are battling feelings of contempt and superiority toward this person, and wondering  how on earth you ended up being such a negative person. 

The answer to negative thought patterns is found in Romans 12. There is a reason this passage instructs us to be transformed by the renewing our minds. As usual, God is waaaaay ahead of science. He created the science that recent studies are only now revealing. He knew long before the scriptures were written that this renewing of our minds is a spiritual exercise with visual, physical results. Scientists now know, through the imaging of brain scans, that our thought patterns create literal grooves on the surface our brain. They have also proven that those pathways can be changed based on what thoughts we allow to take root in our mind.

But God knew that. He understood the science long before the scientists were born. And He gave us Romans 12. 

“Renew your minds,” He instructs, knowing it is not only for our spiritual well-being, but also our physical. “Take every thought captive.” “Think on whatever is good, holy, just, of good report…” These are action steps we can take to change the natural patterns of our thoughts. The exciting thing is, we can take advantage of the science we know and change our natural thought patterns form negative to positive by following God’s instructions and relying on the power given us through His Holy Spirit.

God hasn’t promised us ease. He hasn’t promised us long life or perfect health. We live in a fallen world and bad things happen. But He has given us instructions and the power of the Holy Spirit to live well in a broken world. 

True joy is not circumstantial, it is a Presence with an upper case P and as we choose to walk with the Holy Spirit, God renews our minds and fills us with His joy.

Those who look to Him {the Lord} are radiant…Ps. 34:5  

I love the late John McArthur’s definition of Christian joy. He says, and I quote, 

“Christian joy is the emotion springing from the deep-down confidence of the Christian that God is in complete control of everything and will bring from it our good in time, and our glory in eternity. Christian joy is not an emotion on top of an emotion. it is not a feeling on top a feeling. It is a feeling on top of a fact. It is an emotional response to what I know to be true about my God.” 

Choosing gratitude is a conscious choice to rely on the fact of God’s presence and promises, and not on the feelings that are momentarily clouding these facts. Joy grows in adversity, it’s blooms bursting out of a grateful heart rooted in an unshakable confidence in God’s sovereign goodness. 

Many years ago, when I was in the trenches of young motherhood, I found myself at the end of my rope. Dustin had become a runner. In the autism world this is called “eloping” (I cover the first time this happened in “Dustin’s Book” as we’ve come to call it.)

https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/857025-listen-to-the-music-dustin

Consequently all doors and windows had to be locked because that boy was a regular Harry Houdini and could disappear faster and with more stealth than a Samurai warrior. In addition, our little girl was 2 years old and a more out of the box, intense little soul I have never met. She was Drama 101 and so inconsistent in her responses to life that I couldn’t relax my perpetual vigilance. One never knew if a drop of water on her lap was going to cause a fit of giggles or be the reason for an all out temper tantrum. And before you ask, yes, we believe in consistency and all the things that usually work when training children. All I knew was, whoever wrote the child training books had never met my daughter.  

   A month after her 2nd birthday our third child, a baby boy, was born after a labor that was technically 1.5 hours long, but which I jokingly told my friend had been at least 10 weeks long. He was 4 and 1/2 weeks early and spent the first 8 days of his life in the NICU healing from a pneumothorax. As I sat on the hard, plastic chair in the cramped, sterile space surrounded by beeping machines, bright lights and crying babies, I remember wondering out loud how I would manage when we were sent home. In an odd twist of reality, it dawned on me that that week in the NICU was the most restful my postpartum recovery was going to be. 

God met me there in that little curtained off, 6 foot square space and I knew that no matter how overwhelmed I felt, no matter how out of control my life was in that season, He was with me and His presence was my comfort and strength. 

My friends, if you find yourself in a difficult season right now, choose to rejoice anyway. Verbalize your thankfulness for all the big and little things; from the birdsong that greets you in the morning, to the trials that strengthen your faith. We rejoice, not because life is easy, but because we have a big, big God who cares about every detail of our lives.

Remember the pathway illustration? When we make intentional rejoicing a habit, we create physical pathways in our brain that become the path of least resistance and therefore our default way of thinking. The creative genius of our amazing Creator God assists the Holy Spirit’s enabling by the formation of habitual, physical pathways that eventually become almost as natural as breathing. God wants to hear you sing when the waves are crashing around you, not only once you’ve been rescued.

I heard a preacher once say (and I don’t remember who it was so I can’t give credit where it’s due) that worship works like a coat.  This stuck with me. Because think about it, when the weather is frightful, whether it’s raining, snowing or cold, whatever the reason, we put on a coat. Does the coat change the weather? No, of course it doesn’t, but it does change me in the weather.

Worship is the way we clothe ourselves for a discouraging world. It is the way we change our focus and push aside the things that are worrying and discouraging us and lift up who Jesus is.  In worship we put Jesus back on the throne of our lives and say, “You are King and I am following You. I believe you are sovereignly in control of all this.” When we worship Jesus, when we walk in obedience and praise, it is like putting on a warm winter coat and the very same circumstances that were crushing us yesterday, become something we can thrive in today.

My friends, God never intended for the difficult things in our lives to consume us. He specializes in turning ashes into beauty and would have our every hard thing become another platform for praise from which we declare His goodness to our families, communities, and the world around us. This is the victor’s perspective. This is the path of gratitude from which flows a fountain of joy. 

He is for us and not against us!

Love, ~Lynn