“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” ~ James 1:2-4

I’ve been through some pretty hard things in my life. For a long time I would have told you that going through a divorce was the hardest thing I’d ever been through.

Then my mom died.

Almost two years ago now my mom passed into the presence of Jesus. She had ALS. ALS is a “progressive neurodegenerative condition that affects nerve cells in the the brain and spinal cord. As motor neurons die, the brain can no longer control voluntary muscles leading to escalating weakness, difficulty speaking, swallowing and breathing.” (google.com) They still don’t know what causes it and there is still no cure. Most cases are seemingly random. The most common cause of death for people with ALS is respiratory failure, which was the case with my mom.

When your mom dies you are thrust into a new reality that your mind, heart and soul struggle to accept. The body of the person who bore you into the land of living has now ceased to live. You never get over it, but you do learn how to live in it.

James tells me to count my mom’s death all joy…

To count my mom’s death, all joy…

All joy?

My faith was tested. I went through some of the darkest days of my life after my mom died. I wrestled through what seemed to be God’s silence. It was a pain I don’t know how to describe.

C.S. Lewis describes it this way in his book A Grief Observed, “But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.”

Somehow he brought me out of that “dark night of the soul” more sure of him than I have ever been before. The Surgeon had completed his work.

Sarah Clarkson puts it beautifully in her book This Beautiful Truth, “God doesn’t offer explanation; but oh, He offers His own heartbreakingly beautiful self.”

I can now say that I count my mom’s death joy because through it God gave me himself. He made me so sure of him that there is NOTHING in this world that will ever again shake my faith in him.

And that, my friends, is pure joy. Joy that is not based on any good or bad circumstance in this life but is based on who he is, and he does not change (James 1:17). We come out of trials with our faith strengthened and lacking nothing because he gives us himself.

And he is all we need.

Count it all joy.

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