What is this that I feel?

This is a really special place to me. This is the view from my office at the Korean Church of Knoxville. My office is actually called the Translation Room. It is where the Korean service is translated into english each Sunday by caring hearts. The kind people at KCK told me that we didn't have to call it the Translation Room anymore, that we could just call it my office. I told them NO! I WANT this room to be called the Translation Room. It's what is happening in me as I wander through life, further onto the narrow road. Translation. God is translating the mess of my heart into pure and blameless.

My family and I just celebrated the wedding of Lea's sister over the weekend in Dallas. It was a holy and joyful celebration. Lea, Grannie and I drove back all day Monday and fell in bed after our 15 hour journey. As I took Trey to school on Tuesday morning, I noticed that it felt different in town. It's Thanksgiving week. It feels different....to me. This season has been especially meaningful to Lea and I over these last 26 years. The next one sixth of this year is full of celebrations...Thanksgiving, Advent, Trent, Jesus and Trey's birthdays.

As Lea and I had lunch yesterday we were talking about this time of year for us, it's fullness and meaning. There are many in the world that don't feel any kind of sentimental nostalgia about this or any other time of their year. They feel death and suffering in their heart either by life circumstance or by choice, either of which are heart oppressing. Their reality affects my heart reality and enhances what I feel further. What is this that I feel? Is it just sentimental nostalgia, holding onto past feelings as a way to fake through the consumer chaos of the coming days? What I feel is not the definition of what my reality is, but God has designed me to feel and therefore I don't want to be afraid to feel and miss that part of His expression in me.

And so what is this that I feel? It's His story.

Multiplied Joy coming from Multiplied Suffering. This is what enhances the gift of relationships.

That is the heightened sense of story that I am aware of in these days of Thanksgiving, Advent and life celebrations. I am so grateful for the growing joy represented by those associated with me looking out the above window from the Translation Room. I could have never imagined it.

Ok, I get the multiplied joy, but what about the multiplied suffering? Your life is pretty calm, no big drama. We're all suffering because we're not home yet. It may be a different degree of suffering, perceived or real. Certainly one facing the sword blade that will drain their life blood is experiencing multiplied suffering with a dripping realness, but our common ache is still all real. We're not home yet and it affects us deeply.

This is what I believe I feel as I enter these days. Multiplied Joy coming from Multiplied Suffering. This is God's story, not mine, and it affects my heart. That is why we feel the richness of relationships. The bible book of Hebrews puts it like this, talking about Jesus. "Who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross." Multiplied Joy coming from Multiplied Suffering. That is real. I am not making this up. That story is in me and it is what I am feeling.

And as I look out the window from the Translation Room this morning....I am thankful.

There's more.