“You have made known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.”
That’s Psalm 16:11, and it’s what someone put on a wedding gift for my friend Lisa Robertson and her husband Tim, some 40 years ago. Back then, the verse spawned several questions in Lisa’s mind: Is there a path God has for me? Can I find it? Will I take it?
Is this the next step?
Most folks, I imagine, have had similar thoughts. Because life is full of pathways–hard ones, surprising ones, joyful ones–and we can find ourselves wondering which paths are from God, or which steps we should take. Happily for us, those are some of the very questions Lisa tackles in her new book, The Path of Life, which releases this week!
I’ve known Lisa for the better part of four decades. She’s Pollyanna to my Eeyore; she always expects (and sees) the best in people and things, while I mumble about what could be done or made better. But there’s no sugar-coating in this book; instead, Lisa is incredibly candid about the paths she’s been on: The Difficult Path (when her younger sister was killed); the Parenting Path (and how hard it was to watch her son move 3,000 miles away); the Path of Change (when it looked like her church–the place where she’d raised her five children–was coming apart at the seams, and all she could do was look at God and say, “I hate this! I don’t want to be here!”)
Don’t get me wrong. This book isn’t one of those tragic memoirs where you use up a whole box of Kleenex before you hit chapter three. Quite the contrary! The way Lisa processes life’s painful moments helps point us to God, revealing His path–even when His presence seems hidden.
Which is exactly what happened in Lisa’s marriage one day. Here’s how she tells it…
Early in our marriage, I learned how easy it was for me to allow my fickle feelings to determine how I reacted to Tim. One fall afternoon, we had an argument, and in my mature way, I decided to “punish” Tim by giving him the silent treatment. All Sunday afternoon, I didn’t say a word to him. I huffed and puffed, silent on the outside but boiling on the inside.
My big mistake was that this happened during football season, and Tim was so engrossed in his beloved Redskins that he wasn’t aware of my silence. After several hours, my feelings were hurt and I didn’t think Tim cared, but the reality was that he didn’t even know.
Can’t you just picture it? You’ve got the wife all hot and bothered, banging pots and pans in the kitchen, while the husband (who literally has no idea that he’s in the doghouse!) is sitting there, eating chips and wondering what he did to merit a whole afternoon of uninterrupted football. Anybody else’s marriage been there??
I’ll let you read Lisa’s story for yourself, but the punchline is that she learned a lot about the dangers of giving free rein to her feelings that day. “Allowing our emotions to have too much influence in our lives,” she writes, “can lead us to believe things that are not true.”
Roger that.
And Roger this, as Lisa shares what she’s learned about the Psalm 16 promise of joy:
Rather than manufacturing the right feelings, if we want to truly be filled with joy in God’s presence, we need to know that this joy is a gift from God, plain and simple. There’s nothing we can do or strive toward; we don’t achieve fullness of joy, but as a gift we receive it…
Truthfully, it might be easier for me to work for joy than to just receive it, regardless of my circumstances. But thankfully, no matter what our circumstances may be, when we choose to open our eyes and see God’s presence all around us, at every moment, the gift of His fullness of joy is not far behind.
Good words for this Eeyore to remember. Thank you, Lisa.
❤️
The Path of Life releases on May 8; preorder on Amazon now to get your copy by Mother’s Day. And if you’d like to win a free copy, hop on over to my Instagram (@jodie_berndt) or Facebook page (@JodieBerndtWrites) and leave a comment or tag a friend who reminds you of Lisa–someone who just sort of oozes “fullness of joy.” We’ll pick three winners on Monday!
