In the Pain

Integrity is what you do when no one else is looking. My father preached a whole sermon on that sentence once, and it stuck with me forever. Like so many others I had become a master of “saving face” by the age of six. I first learned to put on a front for the mother board at my church, later it was for my parents, or teachers, or even friends. It’s not that I lived two different lives; I just had certain behaviors that I reserved for certain settings. How disintegrable of me. It’s easy to be good in public, but when you’re behind closed doors, it’s a bit more of a test. The truth is you don’t know what you have until it is put to the test.

I have always been a purse girl. The vanity in me admires the fact that Kimmora Lee Simmons has a whole closet in her house, just for handbags. But that’s another blog for another time. When I received my first Christian Dior purse for my 16th birthday, it was a total surprise. I felt like the queen of the world the first time I carried it to school. I knew it was real, but the girls at school didn’t. And they certainly were not going to take my word for it. So, with my consent, my purse went through the fake test. After careful inspection it was the general consensus that my purse was indeed straight off the shelf of some high priced boutique that makes money off insecure/unhappy people trying to buy their way to a fulfilling life. The fact that my purse passed the test, made its genuineness even more exhilarating. Again, my obvious materialism here is another issue, for another blog.

The last time I wrote I was preparing to embark on a search for unspeakable joy. Per advice from a good friend, for seven days I started and ended my day by writing down ten things for which I am thankful. The lists were not hard at all. They spanned the gamut of tangible things like shelter and a good pair of Uggs (a critical necessity in Upstate New York), to things that can’t be touched or felt, like an open mind and talent. So I was smiling for pretty much the entire week. But it’s easy to smile when dwelling on the awesome things that God has done for you.

When I knew that my search for unspeakable joy was over, I was in the middle of a hot mess. Professors gone nuts, peers acting incompetent, folks getting on my last nerve, friends not understanding, even my body was disagreeing with me. Normally I make it through these times with chocolate, some crying, and a mindset that this too shall pass. But if I had captured this joy that I longed for so deeply, I would be able to get through this rough patch differently. I saw God in these times. I saw Him shaping me and molding me in these new trials for which I had no control over. I thanked Him. I thanked Him for the incompetence and insanity and chaos. I thanked Him because I realized that this was apart of my test. He was only giving me what I had asked for. I was not going to find it basking in everything that was going right. If I had it, it would show up when I was engulfed in all the wrong. When I had no joy to pull from, except that deep down inside. That unspeakable joy.

It seems weird, but, in the pain, that’s where I found my unspeakable joy.