I felt the wall on my back, tears on my cheeks, and an ache in my heart. But, I felt joy – no, I know joy – because joy is the peace of deep waters in my soul that run still.

Yesterday I told a friend about a disappointment that left me with a splintering crack in my heart. Pain leaks out of that crack. “Rebecca, Thank goodness this isn’t all were living for,” she told me. Thank goodness my life doesn’t rest on things that disappoint. Light gets in through that crack in my heart.

We sustain losses, insults, and disappointments all throughout life – they might not all merit the term “heartbreak” but our hearts crack and splinter under the weight, and we ache. My heart may ache, my stomach may churn, but the water in the depths of my soul runs clear and still. I know this “joy” that is indistinguishable from peace because my hope was never placed in the thing that disappointed. No, the rock is steady and the fortress secure. Chaos maybe within me and without me, but my soul knows that it is well. And because of that peace, there can always be a whisper of joy. At the bottom of my heart and the end of the day, I have a quiet hope that feels like peace and looks a little like joy, because my identity and purpose aren’t rooted in things that disappoint. While I falter and fail and doubt, who I am is ultimately rooted in who Christ is, and that is unchanging and will not fail me. I want my heart to say to the Lord, ‘you are my Lord. I have no good apart from you.'” (Psalm 16)