A Snippet On Joy From Saving Faith

Bitterness is an emotion that grows quickly and is hard to gain control over, don’t you think? It’s so easy to find flaws in our lives and wham! Before we know it, that ugly emotion has taken root. Faith Nicholson, the main character in my latest novella Saving Faith, has lived with one disappointment after another—not the least of which she’s heaped upon herself. I’ve been accused of being hard on myself more than once, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. If you’re a Type 1 on the enneagram scale, it’s a natural byproduct.

But the other side of this is joy. Most of have tried to cultivate it on our own, like Faith did. Every advertiser in the world is banking on it. If only I had that house, car, kid, job, figure, (fill in the blank), then I’d be happy. And we are—for a very short time. Because joy cannot come from the outside; it must be cultivated from within. It took me a very long time to figure this out. Had I learned this early in my life, I could have saved myself a lot of grief (and money).

I love how Isaiah (61:10) reminds us from where we truly find joy. “I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”