As she tells the story in Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, five days after her first round of chemotherapy, Margaret Feinberg kept a commitment to lead a spiritual retreat in Maine. Everything was going fine until the third day and the scheduled nine-mile hike up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park.
Almost
from the outset, everything began to go wrong, for Margaret and the group. Some
became separated from the main group. Others began to fatigue and peeled off,
returning to base. A couple got lost temporarily. Some got sunburned. Margaret herself
began to lose energy, decided to hurry back, took the wrong trail (with most of
the group following her) and had to climb back up to find the right trailhead.
That
sounds like a metaphor. A metaphor for life. Wrong turns. Enthusiasm finding a
harsh reality. Making wrong choices. Making bad choices. Physical problems. Assuming
you can do more than you actually can. Disappointment.
So,
she asks, where’s the joy?
Coincidentally,
or perhaps not, right before I read this chapter in Feinberg’s book I listened
to the sermon preached by one of our pastors Sunday. The Scripture was Psalm
102. If you haven’t read it, or aren’t familiar with it, it’s a lament. The New
International Version has a brief lead-in: “A prayer of an afflicted man. When
he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.”
What
is the psalmist lamenting? Disappointment. Depression (or what sounds just like
it). Listlessness. Purposelessness. Persecution by enemies. Feeling useless. “Withering
away like grass.”
Been
there. Done that.
We’ve
all experienced these feelings and situations. All the neo-prosperity
gospelites to the contrary, life is not a mansion, big Mercedes Benz, and a
timeshare in Monaco. Life is hard. Problems happen. Loved ones get sick. You
get sick. Jobs are lost. Dreams are postponed and then cancelled. People do
awful things to you. You do awful things to people.
Whatever
happened to “and they all lived happily ever after?”
Life
is, well, hard. Bad things happen to good people, and all the time. Women and
children are kidnapped by those who pride themselves on achieving new levels of
vicious violence. The wicked prosper.
The
psalmist has an answer, one very similar to what Feinberg discovered. As much
as we rebel against the idea, the fact is that life – this life – is not all
about us. This life is always about a larger story.
And
the joy is in that larger story.
Led
by Jason Stasyzen and Sarah Salter, we’re reading Margaret Feinberg’s Fight
Back with Joy. To see other posts on this week’s chapter, “The Biggest Myth
About Joy,” please visit Sarah at LivingBetween the Lines.
