Joy and Pain All Wrapped Up Together

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For many women, the first time we experience joy and pain all wrapped up together is when we give birth to our first child. Jesus understands that. He said:

Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain,
because her hour has come;
but when she gives birth to the child,
she no longer remembers the anguish
because of the joy that a child
has been born into the world.
John 16:21

In the fall of 2012, I experienced the reality of joy and pain all wrapped up together. On a Saturday evening, I was busy finishing up a gift for our older daughter’s wedding shower on Sunday afternoon when a doctor called me from Nashville. He told me that my mother had had a heart attack and he had just finished performing surgery to save her life. Mother, then a widow who was living alone, had recognized her symptoms and called 911.

Other members of our family and I rushed to the hospital an hour and a half away to be with Mother. After spending the rest of the night at the hospital, the bride-to-be, the sister of the bride, and I took showers in an unoccupied hospital room before I went into intensive care to tell Mother that I was leaving temporarily (she had been planning to go to the shower, too), and we came back for the shower.

At the shower, I felt the pain that my mother had nearly died the night before and was in intensive care and the great joy of our daughter’s upcoming marriage.

As Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes:

There is an appointed time for everything.
And there is a time for every event under heaven—
. . . A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4

On our first full day in the Smoky Mountains in March, we awoke to a beautiful sunshiny morning. This was the view behind our cottage.

Though spring had not arrived yet, we saw these beautiful signs of spring.

However, as we drove up the mountain toward Newfound Gap, we began seeing patches of snow.

The day continued to be sunny as we drove ever upward, but in places where the sun rarely shone, we saw beautiful clusters of icicles.

We marveled at their intricacies, . . .

. . . at this frozen fern frond, . . .

. . . and at the green plants growing above the ice.

Beside the icicles . . .

. . . and at Newfound Gap, we were glad we had brought our coats along.

The view at the gap was beyond description.

On our return trip, we passed back through the curves and tunnels we had seen as we climbed to the top.

After our descent, we saw this tree dressed up in its spring blooms.

That evening a beautiful moon shone down on us when we walked back to our cottage after dinner.

God had created a beautiful day with sunshine and warmth and moonshine and cold. Life is like that, and He gives us the grace to live through all of life’s seasons—the cold and the warm, the days and the nights, the joy and the pain—whether separated by minutes or hours or years.

I know how to get along with humble means,
and I also know how to live in prosperity;
in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret
of being filled and going hungry,
both of having abundance and suffering need.
I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:12-13

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