Lord, Help Me Choose Joy.

We currently have ants in the house...

It started with a raisin under the sofa that one of the boys dropped and forgot about. Then they were on the hall floor.

Then somehow all the way across to the bins in the kitchen, which is nowhere near the front door. This morning they'd found their way up into the food cupboards...

So I have spent the weekend on my knees. Spraying. Wiping down every surface they have crossed so they cannot tell each other where the food is. Following the line of them backward to work out where they are getting in.

It is the first thing I think about when I wake up, and so far I am not convinced any of it is working!

Theo and Jesse are having the time of their lives.

They crouch down to watch them. They point out new ones like they are finding treasure. This morning they were dancing around them on the kitchen floor while I was taking out the whole of our food cupboard and scrubbing everything.

I would love to tell you I found that lovely. I did not. I found it a bit annoying.

The ants are not any different for them than they are for me. They are not enjoying the morning because the problem looks smaller from three feet up. They know the ants are there. That is the whole game.

They are simply not waiting for the ants to be gone before they have a good day.

I am. I have put my whole week on hold until the house is free of ants, and I have no idea when that will be.

Habakkuk was not writing about ants. He was writing about ruin, the kind that empties a country.

"For though the fig tree doesn't flourish... yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!"

What that gap in the middle skips over is a list. No fruit on the vines. The olive harvest failed. The fields yielding nothing. The flocks gone from the fold and no herd left in the stalls.

Notice that nothing has been fixed when he says it. The fig tree still is not budding. The fields are still empty.

And he does not look away from any of it, either.

He names every lost thing first, out loud, in detail, before he gets to the word that turns it: yet.

Not once this is over. Yet. Now, with none of it solved.

I do not think choosing joy means telling myself the ants are fine. They are not fine.

But I am starting to see that they do not get to have the whole day. They get the cleaning. They do not get the part where the boys are dancing.

And I know that ants in the kitchen are nothing compared to most. Some of you are reading this with an empty chair at your table, or a scan result coming up.

I am not going to stand here and compare that to my week. Habakkuk was not writing about a small thing either, and the reason his words have lasted is that he meant them from inside real loss.

But I think the choice he made is the same one, whatever size the thing is. He did not wait for the fields to fill before he decided where to put his trust.

Maybe you have been waiting for something to lift before you let yourself feel anything good again. God is not asking you to be glad about the hard thing, or to pretend it is smaller than it is.

He is asking you not to hand it everything.

Tomorrow morning the ants will still be here, and so will I, down on the floor with the spray. But at some point I am going to get up and dance with my boys.