Downtime

As we start a New Year, and all the celebrations are past, and the 'winter blues' set in, it's got me thinking about what Joy is.

It sounds strange I know, but so often we define our lives by what makes us happy, what makes forget the bad, by avoiding negative situations, as if somehow that makes everything better. Talk to the person suffering from depression, and you'll find someone who wants to feel anything positive at all, to escape the feeling of drudgery, the feeling that every day will be the same, day after day after day, without any chink of light shining through.

Yeh, that's how it feels sometimes. But is avoiding 'stuff' the best way to live life?

I'm not advocating a way of life that pretends everything is ok, even in difficult circumstances, or a way of life that masochistically 'exalts' in troubles; I'm advocating a real life, a way of living that admits that sometimes life is hard and the best way to get through it is to go 'through' it. Not avoid, not pretend it doesn't exist, not live in denial, but simply admit to people, 'this is where I am at the moment'.

I don't think faith needs to mean that we're always victorious. If you look at the Cross, Jesus says to us there was a dark time, a time when even He felt abandoned by God, felt isolated, felt alone. Even Jesus knew what it was to mourn the loss of someone, to be frustrated at people's responses to you, to get angry at how people are imposing their own ideas of what and who you are.

Faith, surely, is about more than pasting on a smile.

Faith is looking for God when you can't see Him, it's trusting beyond the darkness you can see in yourself. It's trusting that whatever you see, God can and will bring good out of it, no matter what.

Yes, it's 'downtime', but it doesn't have to be 'give-up time'.