I often hear myself say “Personal Growth can be excruciating and exhausting, but I do it anyway because of how good it feels on the other side.” In fact, Life can be hard. Progress can be exhausting. And because it is, there is always joy to look forward to.  However, I have felt lately that, although the “hard”ness of life is real, I have painted a picture that focuses more on the difficulty and not enough on the joy. The truth is that JOY doesn’t always have to be somewhere in the future. Joy and Difficulty actually coexist. We can actually experience the “hard” and the joy at the same time.

Maybe I can illustrate my point by sharing one of my favorite memories…

I feel like the journey of life can somehow be summarized by comparing it to middle school…being middle school age is hard! I know it was for me, anyways. It’s an exciting time–growing up–bodies are changing in both exciting and awkward way. It’s all about discovering independence, learning about the bigger picture of life, figuring out who you are, what you enjoy, what you’re good at and maybe not so good at.  It can also be a lonely time; it’s when all the “separation” happens. Guys and girls start to “notice the difference,” the pretty ones group together, “popular” becomes a thing, and if you’re not one who makes the cut, you can totally feel worthless!  I remember the devastating day that my best friend told me she didn’t like me and that she never really had. I wasn’t one of the cool ones, and she was…can anyone relate?

Somehow, however, I don’t only have horrible memories about middle school. Maybe it’s because this time of awkward loneliness was also a time when I learned some of my greatest lessons about how to be happy anyway and to find joy in the journey.

I discovered early on that one of my talents was singing, and using my voice to express what was in my heart was my “happy place.” It was where I could go to find confidence. To help me endure the hard parts of middle school life, I created a lot of visions around what I could do with my voice–one of them was to be a member of Sound Celebration when I was old enough to try out. (Sound Celebration was an advanced vocal performing group at the high school, and they were REALLY GOOD!) In 9th grade, I was finally old enough to audition, and I was SO EXCITED! I was excited to get to make friends with people my age who also loved to sing, excited to be able to travel and perform, excited to maybe even make a record like they had done in past years. Even when I learned that the director of “Sounds” (as it was affectionately called) was retiring and I would be auditioning with the new director, I couldn’t wait to finally reach this life-long goal. When it was my turn to audition, I entered with confidence, sang my song, and felt positive that I would be chosen as a new soprano in the group…

…but I didn’t make the cut…

Heartbroken could not begin to explain how I felt. I was lost–my world was shattered. I was so embarrassed that I had felt so confident that I would make it. Who did I think I was? I mean, obviously I was failure at everything, because if I wasn’t good at the one thing I thought I was good at, then I must have been even worse than I even realized at the things I knew I was bad at!! I was sure I would never come out of my bedroom again.

My parents somehow coaxed me to come upstairs and talk with them for a minute. I will never forget it–they handed me a record by a new recording artist, Whitney Houston (ever heard of her?) I don’t remember everything they said, but I remember them asking me to turn the cover over and read the words on the back. Among other things, I read the serenity prayer “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” And they had me listen to the lyrics of the “The Greatest Love of All.”

I still cried for probably an other hour or two, but I felt better. I felt the power of ME shining through. I felt the love of my parents and the love of God deep inside my heart, and I knew that even when I felt alone, discouraged, unpopular, and untalented, I could look inside myself and find that LOVE and feel better.

Life hands us challenges almost on the daily, but life can also be beautiful and amazing! It takes a little extra effort sometimes to find the joy, but I promise you, it is right there along side of the hard stuff. And when we can’t seem to find it on the outside, we can always look inside…

“And if, by chance, that special place

that you’ve been dreaming of

leads you to a lonely place,

find your strength in LOVE.”