When sadness and joy come together

I started this blog to journal a new phase in my life.  It was sparked by my one word challenge in 2014 - audacious.  And, it turned into a fire when my world was turned inside out and upside down with the realization HE meant "audacious" in a completely different way than I imagined.  It's really about ratcheting down, ratcheting from within, and communing with Him more. Regroup. Reassess. Re-examine. Refocus.  Understand who I am, what my strengths are, what is important to Him and therefore should be important to me.  It's been a journey of years of Bible study that's led me here.  It's all twirling in my mind and flowing out on paper.  

I read random blogs.  Mostly I'm directed to them from a community of Christian men and women on twitter, and they lead me to others, etc.  One of the random blogs I read the other day was well-done, introspective and the author was in a very similar place as me.  Two viewers (presumably random folks) left comments about how egotistical she was being -- writing with all the "I" this and "I" that.  CAUTION:  this blog is about ME, my journey.  It will be full of I's -- because the only person I can change is "I".  

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More days than not I awake with an overwhelming sadness, and yet I'm joyful.

Can you mix sadness and joy?  

I didn't think you could. But I do. 

There is sadness for the past, for my failings, for all the lives I've ignored, for those living on the fringes that I've laughed at or mocked.  There is sadness for loss I've had, loss I'm experiencing, loss I know I'll have.  There is sadness in realizing I'm not who I want to be, nor probably who He wants me to be.  There is sadness in wondering "what if.....".  What if I'd focused differently in my 30's.  What if we'd valued things differently when we first married?  What if we'd started Dave Ramsey earlier? What if we'd not purchased "the" money pit of a home?  What if I'd really focused on "our people" more?  Oh, the "what if"'s can overwhelm me with sadness... and probably should overwhelm me for a season so I'm encouraged to move on.

But joy is there too.  Joy in knowing He is there.  He is speaking to me. He is saying "I love you BECAUSE I made you. I don't expect anything from you but to have a relationship with me.  To know me, to long for me, to worship me."  Joy in knowing that I can repent of all my failures and move on. There were so many takeaways from this weekend's IF:Gathering (yes, enough to buy the downloadable version to watch over and over), but my most prominent takeaway: "I love you. You, as you are. You, for what you do or don't do.  You, for what you know or don't know. I love you."  

There is great joy in His love.  In being loved.  In being sought after.

And, joy encourages me to dream.  Dream of the impact my future "what if"'s might have. 

I'm surrounded and cheered on by "a great cloud of witnesses" who have won their race (with stumbles along the way), now it is my turn to lay aside my weight of past "what if"'s and finish the race, the race Christ gives me.

The Race of Faith

Hebrews 12 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.