Three days later

and I'm still frustrated that I was misunderstood and didn't have the chance to fully state my position in Sunday School. This is dis-jointed and rambling but sometimes I just have to let it out before I explode.

So:

I think that most people labor under a false assumption that life is supposed to be easy. It's not. It's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to make us learn and grow.

And what I would have added if given the chance:

It is through the process of constant attrition that we find true joy and not the shallow temporary happiness-es that so many think are joy.

Joy is not in money, fame, ease, comfort, or HDTV. It isn't in checking off the list of the ways you are perfect.

Joy is in the journey, in hard work, in the peace you have deep down even when you are going through trials. Joy is your testimony, is love, is the touch of a child. Joy is abiding and sure, it can be masked for a time by emotional upset, but it isn't gone, it is always there if you reach through the mists and hold on.

Joy isn't what we find at the end of the road, it's the companion that held our hand the whole way through. It is as doggedly determined as a Marine and as gentle as a butterfly kiss.

Yes, "Men are that they might have joy." That's the whole point of life, not to earn the joy in the end but to be joyful, to find out that we ARE joy.

We ARE light.

And if you AREN'T joy yet, if when you look at your core and you don't find a pillar of light connected straight to heaven, well then you don't know yourself very well, and I hope your next trial helps you find out.