Wholehearted: Where True Joy Begins
- Lisa Lou
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
Why lasting joy is not found in circumstances but formed in a life aligned with God
This essay is part of the Wholehearted series on lasting joy. If you would like to begin at the beginning, you can read the previous essay first.
The kitchen is quiet before anyone arrives. Plates are stacked, glasses catch the light, and the table is set, but the room still feels unfinished. This is usually the moment I think that once everything is in place, I will feel settled. Once the work is done, I will be able to rest. But that feeling rarely comes from finished circumstances.
We often believe that if something in our life would change, we will finally feel at peace. If this happens, that changes, or I can just get through this season, then I will finally rest. Then everything will be fine. We keep placing peace somewhere in the future and telling ourselves we will feel better when we get there. But where is “there?”
We all experience seasons that are not easy. I have walked through seasons of hospital stays, infertility, loss, uncertainty, and prayers cried through tears. Just as everyone reading this essay has. Those seasons were not happy ones. But even in the midst of pain and uncertainty, something steady remained. I knew God was present, and that knowledge held when my emotions could not.
When my dad died at 58 after a lengthy illness, I felt like I could not breathe. My heart hurt, and I missed him terribly. At one point, I said to myself that I needed to separate my heart from my head in order to heal. My heart missed my dad, but my head knew he was with God, and I had to decide which one would lead me.
I imagined a conversation with God where He said, “I know you miss your daddy, and I am willing to give him back to you, but he will return in the same condition he was in before. A broken body and suffering. But it is your choice.”
Knowing in my mind I would never want my father to suffer again like he had, this helped my heart realize I could find joy, even in sorrow. I could find peace because of what I knew, not because of what I felt. That moment brought clarity in a way nothing else had. I could not rely on my circumstances to bring joy.
If we do not separate what we feel from what we know, our emotions will lead us to conclusions that are not true. We feel loss and we feel unsettled, so we assume something in our life must change. That is why we keep searching for a better situation that we believe will finally fix us.
We do this in more subtle ways. We tell ourselves that once this season passes, once this pressure lifts, once something changes, then we will finally feel at peace. But that kind of thinking keeps us waiting on something that was never meant to carry that weight.
This way of thinking means we are relying on our circumstances to bring the joy and rest we seek. Yet, this is not reality. Yes, we might feel better temporarily, but that peace will not last.
Years ago, when I read The Law of Happiness by Henry Cloud, he explained that research shows only a small portion of our happiness is tied to circumstances, while a more meaningful portion is shaped by our thoughts and choices. What led him to write the book was his realization that these findings were not new, but that Scripture has been teaching this all along. Yet many of us still spend most of our energy trying to change our circumstances instead of pursuing true joy. We believe a new environment, a new season, or a new outcome will finally give us what we are looking for. But if happiness depends on what is happening around us, we will always be seeking, never fulfilled.
Joy is different because it is not built on outcomes. Joy is steady because it is rooted in something that does not change. When our lives are grounded in Christ, we are no longer dependent on circumstances to feel at peace, and that changes how we live.
Wholehearted living does not mean life becomes easy. It means we stop waiting for life to feel complete before we engage with it. We begin to show up to what God has given us with clarity, faith, and obedience, trusting that He is present in all circumstances.
Scripture calls us to this kind of life. In the Bible, we are told to renew our minds, to give thanks in all things, and to serve God with a whole heart. These are not ways to just control our emotions. These are ways of living that align us with what is true. And this gratitude that we are called to, in good times and bad, is something we must learn. It happens in the ordinary rhythms we return to again and again, often without realizing what is being built.
Around the table, we begin to tell the truth about our lives. We remind one another what is real. We help each other separate what we feel from what we know. These small, repeated moments shape the atmosphere of a home and, over time, the hearts of the people within it.
As we return to it, day after day, we begin to see what was true all along. Joy was never waiting for us somewhere in the future. It is being formed in us right now, in the middle of the life we are already living. Not when everything settles, but as we learn to see clearly, to trust what is true, and to return again to what matters.
Together with you,
Lisa Lou
If this helped you recognize where you have been waiting for life to feel different before you can feel at peace, share it with a friend who is carrying that same weight. Invite her back to the table, where joy is being formed in the middle of real life.
