Pain, joy and endurance

I will probably sound stark raving mad right now b/c all of this is floating around in my head and I jumped outta the tub to get it down on paper.  Yikes!  It was after I read this:  "Everyday we're both wasting away and being renewed. PAIN IS REAL, BUT SO IS JOY." (re: 2 Cor 4:16) in a Steven James book.

Ok, imagine your face and on one eye, put PAIN, on the other JOY.  When you look through both of your eyes and pain and joy are focused together looking in the same direction, you see hope.  But, if you close one, 2 things could happen.

CLOSE JOY:  You just have pain.  Pain is all you see and all you feel and the only thing you can see for the future.  I can see how suicide happens. You'd think, ok this is the world, but NO, we see it all the time in believers.  Weeping and waiting and "trusting" and waiting and waiting meanwhile hurting and in pain, thinking this is spiritual?  THE WORLD SEES THIS!  It's not what Jesus showed us.

Now.. open joy and 

CLOSE PAIN:  You are 100 percent joyful all of the time, plastic happy that has no need for hope.  And what kind of a life are you living if you don't need hope????  And then if you have 100 percent joy, is that His joy?  That's not Jesus.  There's something there about pain being his road to joy.  

ONLY joy can't be the right way and here is why.  When Jesus walked to the cross he was in pain, total agony.  And he felt it 100 percent.  He didn't get a pass, but it was worth it because of the joy set before him.  He didn't feel happy, but he knew joy.  And he was looking toward ultimate joy.  He saw the cross (hope) through the focus of joy and pain.   

Steven James:  "to enjoy pain isn't Christianity; it's masochism.  But to willingly endure suffering because you love something more than your own comfort level, well, that's getting closer to the heart of the divine."  

So endure the pain, know it has a purpose.  It doesn't lead you to joy, you should already have His joy.    The joy makes us capable of enduring the pain.  

Paul said don't "lose heart" and maybe when we close both of our eyes that's what we lose sight of.    We lose it all.  Close off joy and close off pain and you are numb, which is worse than anything (lukewarm, not hot or cold and God can't work with that).  Ok, probably not a lot of this makes total sense, but I wanted to get it out.  I'm exhausted haha