Finding Joy that Lasts | Holly Furtick

So we're sitting at the kitchen table, and all of a sudden we heard a loud noise that sounded like an enormous downpour. It was kind of a rainy day. And so Stephen looked at me and he said, is that the rain? And at first I thought it was. And the more I listened, we were both sort of at the same time. We looked at each other, and we realized, no, that sound is coming from inside of the house, and that is not a good sound. I got up, and I started walking quickly towards the sound. And as I turned the corner to our bedroom, I knew that we had trouble. There in my closet was a steady stream of water coming down from the ceiling. I mean, like, someone had turned the bathtub faucet wide open, and it was just pouring down. Stephen wasn't far behind me. And when we saw the disaster, we. We each made a different decision. So he ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a trash can. He threw the bag out, and he took the trash can to put it under where the water was falling through the ceiling. He wanted to just catch the water. I ran upstairs to the laundry room to try and stop the water at its source. You see, I knew that we had gotten a new washer dryer the day before, and I thought, this must be where the water's coming from. And what had happened was somehow, throughout the course of a few loads of laundry, the hose going from the wall to the washer had wiggled free, and the water had just pooled all over the floor and then broken through and was streaming through the ceiling and into the closet. And it had been running for a while. I'm going somewhere with this story. Just stick with me for a minute. Sometimes in life, we experience a flood of emotions. And those emotions, if left out of control, can cause a lot of damage. So when we experience these emotions, we can do one of two things. Some of us, we grab buckets, like my husband, and we try to catch the water. We're fixing it externally. He was trying to just. I don't know where this water is coming from, but we've got to stop it from getting all over the carpet. We think that we can fix whatever's going on with something new. A new pair of shoes or a new house, a new job, maybe a new wife. But unless you hook your hose up to the source, you will always be running for more buckets you can hook up to the source. And once you have that connection, you experience a peace that transcends all understanding, a peace that calms your heart, even though you may not know how you're going to pay your bills. A peace that calms your heart. Even when you find out that you were exposed to a sickness. I don't know why this is happening. I don't know how long this pain will last. But my joy is not contingent on my circumstances. My joy is my job. I am not going to run around like a crazy person with buckets that may bring temporary joy, but never a true and lasting one. And by God, I am determining that I am going to stay hooked up to the source, because that's where my peace comes from. No more buckets.