When Joy Becomes Pain

Have you ever had something you love become something you dread?

Sometimes, joys which at one time fed and energized us (ministry, spiritual disciplines, relationships, etc) can become burdens that threaten to kill us.

The movie The Piano (1993) provides a very apt metaphor for joy that becomes death. The film garnered three Oscars (Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay) and had a powerful impact on me when I saw it, but be warned it contains some graphic scenes.

The main character, Ada McGrath, does not speak (ever since her first husband was killed). Instead, as the movie begins, her piano is her voice and her joy. However, due to the circumstances she experiences in being a mail-order bride to New Zealand in the 1800s, the piano becomes an incredible burden and a source of pain.

So much so, in fact, that at the end of the movie, as they leave New Zealand by rowboat, Ada has the men push the piano into the ocean. The rope attached to the piano catches on Ada's ankle (on purpose?), pulling her into the water, but she does not struggle. She allows the piano to drag her down and almost become her death.

This is how, at times, joys like ministry, relationships, even reading Scripture and praying, can feel like an anchor dragging us down into an abyss of nothingness.

I can remember a season of life in my late 20s when ministry became just that - my spiritual death. I entered into depression and didn't know whether to let ministry continue to kill me or fight for my survival. In fact, I was so dead on the vine that I didn't even know what my survival would look like. I felt like the poet of Psalm 102:

I am a desert owl in the wilderness,
    like an owl of the waste places...
    a lonely sparrow on the housetop.

~ Psalm 102:6, 7

I have since learned that when joys become duty alone, they also become suffocating burdens. If I pray only because I feel like I have to or else I'll get in trouble (from God or from my pastor or from myself or...), which is obviously a terrible motivation for prayer, then prayer can actually hurt us. So can any spiritual discipline or ministry or relationship, if we are motivated solely by duty and not at all by desire.

In the movie, as Ada sinks further away from the surface, her instincts and more importantly her will to survive eventually kick in. She yanks off her boot and swims for the surface.

For us, when we too sink away from joy, two things can help us rise:

First, if possible, stop doing it (the discipline, the ministry, the relationship). As strange and counterintuitive as that may seem, it can actually be the healthiest choice to make. Please note, I understand there are certain relationships we can't simply "stop doing," like parenting or marriage, but there are other "once-joyful-now-harmful" relationships from which we can press "pause."

Second, ask God to restore the desire. It's perfectly all right to say, "Lord, I don't want to pray, but I want to want to pray."

Sometimes we need to die to a way of relating to God or a way of ministering to others or a way of doing church in order to be reborn to a new, deeper, perhaps more mature way of relationship (with God or others). The difficulty is, however, that although it can be incredibly helpful and lead to rebirth, death hurts.

At the end of the movie, Ada's piano goes to the depths of the sea, and it is like she is closing the chapter to that painful part of her life. Interestingly, in the next scene, we see a new chapter of life and a new piano. What had been a joy that became a huge burden has once again become a joy. So can it be for us in ministry, spiritual disciplines, and relationships.

We flee death. Perhaps, rather than fleeing the unknowing of pain and death, we should allow God to take us through the valley so that we can be reborn anew. Then, the joy that became death can become a joy once again, at a deeper, more mature way of being.

The times in my life when I experienced death to a certain kind of ministry or connection with God were painful and lonely. However, looking back with the perspective of several years, I can say that if I had the choice, I would still choose to live through what I did. The initial joy (ministry) that had become duty and death was reborn at a higher way of being and returned to being a joy once again.

It can be the same for you, too.

PAUSE and REFLECT: What does life with God and others feel like for you? Does it feel like slogging work to think of picking up your Bible or connecting with a friend? If so, then stop, rest, and wait.

Begin with honesty before God: "Lord, I'm not going to lie to you. Connecting with you feels like a burden. I don't want it to feel like a burden, but it does. Yet I desire to desire your good things in my life. So I will wait in this valley, trust you are with me in spite of how I feel, and wait for you to breathe life and desire back into my soul. Until then, I will rest."

Connecting with God is intended to be grace-led, not works-led. Today, it may simply begin by you giving yourself the grace to not be where you wish you were, and the permission to stop and wait.

Perhaps, this is the broken, lonely place where God wants to meet you most fully and deeply.

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Photo by Morgan Von Gunten on Unsplash