Tonight at church we sang a song about the joy of our salvation being restored. Fighting back the tears, I knew my heart was crying out to the Lord to restore the joy to my soul. Something has happened in the past few days that has taken my joy away. I willingly let it be taken. I admit it. I know better. I know the "right" answers and the "right" things to do. I even know the truth. I just have had a death grip on my grief and I didn't want to let go.

You can only wallow in this self pity for so long before it starts to eat away at you. It starts in the mind and convinces you of all kinds of horrible, terrible things that are just not true. In a single moment, the whole world becomes your enemy, including God. The prison of solitary confinement brought on by believing those lies begins to make you literally insane.

Thank God though that he doesn't let us stay there too long. Just long enough to not want to be there any longer. I truly do want joy to permeate from within, a joy not based on circumstances, a joy that isn't changed with the ever changing state of my mood, but a joy based on this truth alone: " I have been set free by Jesus my Savior and he promises to restore all that has been lost. " I don't have to stay here, in the depths of depression, abandoning all that God has done in my life up to this point. I can get up and move forward in His Will.

All day the Lord has been confirming his love and forgiveness for me. He has showered me with songs filled with words declaring his mercy and his love. I have actually chuckled, through the tears, as I have seen him again doing what he does best- Pursuing my heart, Whispering his words of intense love for me, reminding me again of his hope, his plan. He proves to me over and over that He will not go away. No matter how hard I try to make him quit on me, to give up and leave me for the junk pile, Jesus keeps picking me up and gently restores me. I have even brought up the deepest areas of my life that are so dark, thinking maybe that will be enough to make him go away. Yet, he doesn't run. Instead, he takes that dark sinful area and shines his light on it, transforming me so he can make me beautiful. What an incredible, intimate lover of my soul the Lord is.

I realize too that joy doesn't equal the absence of grief. I am still trying to learn how to cling to joy and hope and not to the grief. It seems the common thread in all the loss of the past week has been the deeper realization of how desperately I need Jesus. It is easy to say "Your all I need, your all I want..." and not really think about what we are saying. Its easy to declare those words when we have Jesus and everything else. But when all else is stripped away, everyone else has let you down or walked away, and you are left with only Jesus, is he enough? That question has been the ponder of my heart this week.

I wish I could say that I was satisfied with Jesus and only Jesus. I am praying that will be a statement I can say...Jesus you are all I need. You are all I want. You are more than enough for me. How I long to have that stability that comes from that truth taking up residence in my heart. I long for the day that I see having Jesus as the "best" thing and not just the result of not having something else. I think this will be evident in my life, when my heart is so full of Jesus and so satisfied just to have him that I no longer find myself vacationing in the pit of despair. Perhaps then my words will be true when I declare that if he was all I had, he is enough.