I Was Never Alone
The Fight for Joy When No One is Watching
This piece was written during a season of isolation and quiet obedience, where joy felt thin and faith felt imperfect. It is not a testimony of triumph, but of God’s faithfulness—especially where mine falters. If you are in a similar season, my hope is not that you would feel better quickly, but that you would know you are not alone.
Joy is supposed to grow. That’s how Scripture speaks of it—something borne, cultivated, given. And yet there are seasons when joy doesn’t feel like fruit at all. It feels like labor—quiet, unsee, and mostly uncelebrated.
The quiet kind.
You wake up. You sit down. You open your Bible. You pray. You show up. And it feels—awkwardly, almost embarrassingly—like you’re the only one who did. The habit remains. The chair is warm. But joy feels absent, like an empty place no one wants to name.
Still, you stay. Not because it feels faithful but because leaving would feel like lying.
Morning after morning, devotion turns into duty. Not heroic duty—just obedience stripped of warmth. You know you’re supposed to live by God’s word, not by feeling, so you read anyway. You pray anyway. And underneath it all, the question hums: Where are you?
Isolation does this. It doesn’t usually make us rebellious; it makes us suspicious. It teaches us to ask the wrong questions in the right posture. It trains us to measure God’s nearness by our awareness of Him. It whispers that joy must be for other people, in other seasons—people with louder rooms and fuller tables. And if we aren’t careful, we start treating joy as proof: proof that God is near, proof that obedience is working, proof that we’re doing this right.
Even my faithfulness, I’ve come to see, wasn’t as faithful as I wanted it to be.
I showed up, but I wanted something back.
I prayed, but I measured the silence.
I told myself I was content with God alone—while quietly asking Him to make Himself felt.
In that way, even my showing up was crooked. I wasn’t asking whether God was good, I was asking whether He would prove it to me. I wanted the gift more than the Giver, even as I told myself otherwise.
And then God interrupted me without asking permission. Joy arrived without asking whether I was ready to receive it.
I was holding my newborn sons—life sudden and fragile and overwhelming—and the thought landed with almost painful clarity: How dare I even think God is absent? This was not a reward or a result. It was gift. Undeniable, undeserved, unarguable gift.
Joy didn’t arrive because I finally did something right. It arrived because God gave Himself. Not joy in my circumstances. Not joy in myself. Joy in Him—in the God who gives life freely, without waiting for me to recognize it.
What I didn’t expect—what still slows me down as I write it—is that joy arrived not only through life itself, but through her.
I watched my wife labor with a steadiness that left me undone. Not sentimental strength, but something fierce and dignified and costly. This was not softness. This was strength without bravado, courage without performance. Sierra did not take (and never has taken) the easiest path. Even the professionals hesitated. Questions lingered. Caution pressed in.
And she remained resolved.
There is a beauty in childbirth that isn’t soft. It’s severe and holy. Beauty that costs something. Beauty that says, without speech, This is how I was made to give. Life came twice, breath after breath, exactly where doubt had been allowed to speak.
I stood there stunned—not only because children were born, but because I saw again how generous God has been to me. My wife is not an accessory to my life. She is a marvel. A daily astonishment. A living rebuke to my small thoughts of God’s kindness.
I had been measuring God’s nearness by my internal weather, while standing knee-deep in His mercy.
Joy didn’t come first as a feeling. It came as reverence.
And still, when I look ahead, when the thought of another stretch of quiet presses in, I feel joy thinning again. Anticipation tightens. The old fear returns: What if I’m alone again? What if joy doesn’t come this time? Sure, memory steadies me, but it does not make me immune.
This is where our wedding verse meets me as a confession:
“Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines…
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”
My life hasn’t been barren. But my faith has felt that way. The barrenness was quieter. It’s lived in my expectations. My joy has proven fragile. Even now, thinking about being alone again soon, I can feel it wane again.
That verse doesn’t deny barrenness—it refuses to let it have the final word. Joy, there, isn’t a feeling. It’s an act of trust. Joy in God, not joy from God.
A Final Word
Here’s the quiet truth I keep having to relearn: God’s nearness does not depend on my awareness of it. He is not summoned by my attention, nor dismissed by my fatigue.
He does not draw closer when I notice.
He does not pull away when I don’t.
He is not waiting for my joy in order to be good.
That matters because my faithfulness limps. Even my obedience is mixed. Even my pursuit of joy can be crooked. But God’s goodness doesn’t rise or fall with my ability to receive it cleanly.
And when joy comes again—and it will—it won’t mean God has returned. It will mean He was already there.
Joy, I’m learning, isn’t primarily for my reassurance. It’s for His glory. And in a mystery I’m only beginning to understand, God enjoys my joy more than I do. He delights to give it—not because He needs affirmation, but because He is good.
Even in isolation.
Even when joy wanes.
Even when faith feels thin.
I was never alone.
God was near.
And He was good…
the whole time.
Joy did not keep me. God did.
Benediction
May you learn to rejoice in the God of your salvation
even when the fig tree does not blossom,
even when joy feels delayed,
trusting that the Lord is your strength
and that He has not gone anywhere.
Amen.