Can We Really Be Joyful When Life is Hard?

Life definitely has peaks and valleys. It's easy to have joy and gratitude when things are looking up. But can we keep our high hopes when it gets tough, like really tough? That's the question we dove into after learning some great tips to keep a positive mindset in the middle of our "challenges" from Robin Shear, the Joy Coach, in our last episode, 'Inviting God into Your Mess.' In this episode, we decided to put her advice to the test. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for us, we were able to test this against some pretty stinky situations in our personal lives. We'll take an honest look at both our success and failures here. 

Finding gratitude and joy isn't always a walk in the park, and that's totally okay! We explored the importance of giving ourselves and others grace.  Also drawing from both our personal experiences and expert guidance, we discussed how to support others through rough patches, finding that balance between empathy and uplifting encouragement. 

Spoiler alert: There are definitely things we discovered that we can all do for ourselves and to support others, that can make tough times a bit easier. 

RELATED:
Inviting God into Your Mess (with Joy Coach Robin Shear)

What to Say and Not Say When Someone Is Going Through Tough Times

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Imagine Yourself is hosted by Lanée Blaise and Sandy Kovach. Lanée is a TV writer and producer, motivational speaker and podcaster. Sandy is a radio personality, voiceover artist and podcaster. They come to you from the Detroit Metro area and invite guests from all over the world to help encourage you in your health, career, faith journey and more!

Transcript

Sandy Kovach  [00:00:04]:
Can we really have gratitude and even be joyful during tough times? It's a complicated question. We're gonna try to unpack it after hearing some great strategies from Robin Shear, the joy coach, in our last episode, inviting God into your mess. We put it to the test with some of our own kinda tough experiences with honest answers in both successes and failures. It also led us to touch on how to deal with those close to us who are in times of trouble, kinda striking a delicate balance between just empathy and being there for them and wanting to help and cheer them up. These things aren't always easy to talk about, but we did wanna shed some light on this as we welcome you to imagine yourself podcast, where we help you imagine the next chapter of life with grace, gratitude, courage, and faith.

Lanée Blaise [00:00:53]:
Good day to everybody out there. This is Lanee on Imagine Yourself podcast here with Sandy, And we are digging in today on the concept of what happens when things don't go your way and you still want to be grateful and have gratitude in the middle of the mess. We learned about this concept from our previous guest on the previous episode, the joy coach, Robin Shear. And she talks about messy joy and how to attain messy joy. So Sandy and I took all of the tidbits from that episode, and we are trying to imagine ourselves living in a state of gratitude, even if it's messy gratitude.

Sandy Kovach  [00:01:47]:
Messy gratitude can be the best gratitude because it's easy to be grateful when things are going great, but not so much when things aren't. So in addition to gratitude and gratitude is step 1 and joy, I feel like, is a step above gratitude. And that's a lot of what the Messy Joy coach taught us too. And you had to kind of implement that recently, didn't you?

Lanée Blaise [00:02:11]:
I did. I didn't really want to, but it's actually something that I had to reflect back to, which, actually, this can be a good exercise for anyone who's trying to, I don't wanna call it reframing a past situation because that almost implies that you're doing something that's not honest. This is honest, but it is a way of looking at something differently. I know Robin taught us to expect that joy will show up over time. And in this case, I'm going to expect that my gratitude will kick in,

Lanée Blaise [00:02:44]:
you know, over time.

Lanée Blaise [00:02:46]:
So like I'm, I'm in the art of practicing it. But back a little bit ago, during the Christmas holidays, which is a time of course of great expectations. Usually for many people, it's a time of that you're expecting joy to come. In this case, my husband and I are empty nesters, and it was the first time, you know, since our kids have been in school that we really were gonna get to take this big, huge Christmas break vacation to be with family in Florida, this birthday season, all this good stuff. And we got to Florida, and this is the part I'm grateful for. I did get to as soon as we got there, it was my birthday. We got to spend that. That was very great couple days.

Lanée Blaise [00:03:35]:
Now we've still got we're gonna be there for 3 weeks. 1st couple days, great. Then, COVID hit our household.

Lanée Blaise [00:03:45]:
And it's like, wait a second. We're not gonna get a chance to the whole purpose was mainly to see family members. I have cousins there, my aunts and uncle. Cousins were driving down to be there with us. My husband's entire family lives there. It was gonna be awesome. Birthday party celebration for friends of ours that were turning 50. It's a couple that we've known since college, gonna go to their big birthday bash, all the great things.

Lanée Blaise [00:04:14]:
And then COVID, and it was yucky. It was

Sandy Kovach  [00:04:17]:
You ain't going anywhere. No.

Lanée Blaise [00:04:20]:
And and it started with my husband being quarantined from me because I I didn't wanna get it, but then I got it anyway. And it's just a situation where I was so angry and upset and frustrated because COVID for me, what it mainly does besides the congestion and the coughing and everything like that makes me tired. My husband tired. So we're just laying around you. We literally just wake up just to go back to sleep and nap again, watching lots of, I guess the more literal meaning of Netflix and chill, you know, not the fun part of the chill. But, it was just a mess. I kinda had a meltdown, and my my kids were the ones who said, mom, okay. You thought that you were going in to have all this fun with all these folks and you didn't get to do it.

Lanée Blaise [00:05:10]:
But does it matter at all that you got to spend really quality time with us kids and with my husband? Does it mean anything that we got to rest for the first time all year long? No hustle, no bustle, no company, just rest, sleep, all these things that can be considered good. Yeah. And it's, it was so hard. Then my husband's like, also we missed our friend's wonderful 50th birthday bash, but we agree that we're gonna go out on this double date with them in the future and spend more 1 on 1, you know, quality time with them even though we had to forego the big birthday bash. All of this to say, even though this is not the worst of the worst situations, but there's things that we can draw from it, including the fact that COVID didn't take us out and didn't take us to the hospital even. We did recover. I am here now, you know, giving this kind of testimony, but the biggest part is what I saw as a mess. God can still bless and I can still be grateful to God for the things that could have been worse that didn't happen and be grateful for some of the intimate times that we did get to have.

Lanée Blaise [00:06:32]:
And I just give this example just to encourage other people to try to do something similar. Not all situations can we see through to the light of it. I I'm gonna say that right there. And we might not be able to see any good in it either ever or in this lifetime, even though we do know that God works all things together for good. But as humans, sometimes we don't catch that right away. So I do have grace. I definitely have grace for anybody who is feeling that way, including myself sometimes. This was just an example of trying to turn the situation around.

Lanée Blaise [00:07:10]:
And I I know that, Sandy, you've can appreciate it too. You've had to do the same.

Sandy Kovach  [00:07:15]:
Yeah. And you brought up all things work together for good, Romans 8:28. And one thing that the joy coach, Robin, said, and she signed a book for me with a scripture too. And I don't know if she did yours the same, but her life first seems to be, James 1: 2 to 4, finding joy in your trials. And like you said, there are times in life where you're not gonna find it right away. But she helps us work on learning how to do some of that. And she has been through really difficult situations like a major brain injury and other things that happened in her life. Now, as far as what I went through, again, health wise, sort of like you and Robin as well, But it was more of like a chronic thing and that I'm kind of still dealing with, but, not as much because I had a couple surgeries.

Sandy Kovach  [00:08:02]:
But it's kind of I don't want to say maybe homebound. It sounds like I'm never going out, but it's definitely cut my social life. I haven't been able to really travel and do things like that because I've been dealing with health issues. But even more than that, I found some of what you call the downtime. There's no pressure to be out there. And, even though I miss people a lot, and I'm getting back out there now, but man, last year, no trips at all. So I started this year by renewing my passport. And we are starting now to, like, plan some of the travel that we have been wanting to do for a while.

Sandy Kovach  [00:08:37]:
So I learned a lot, a lot of patience through that. And I had to swallow a lot of jealousy with people, you know, just living normal lives and doing normal things. And it's not like you don't know about what they're doing. It's all over social media. So, you know, I probably last year, maybe I went to a couple of movies and coffees and maybe a dinner out once or twice, but that was literally it. And, these four walls, man, they can get a little boring. But And

Lanée Blaise [00:09:05]:
also you didn't know at the time when or if how this was gonna resolve itself too. That's the other part to remember because now you're looking back, but back when you were in the thick of it, it's tough.

Sandy Kovach  [00:09:18]:
Yeah. It's tough. And I'll say, I don't know exactly how it's gonna end, but it's coming to a point where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now.

Lanée Blaise [00:09:27]:
Yeah, Sandy. It is going to turn around. You're on the up swing. I do believe that. I definitely pray that for you. You do have some things that you have gratitude for now, but did it also take you on a more inward journey? Maybe even with God, is that another element that we can say, hey, there's some something to be grateful for with that too?

Sandy Kovach  [00:09:51]:
Yeah. It absolutely did. I got a lot more serious about seeking God as we do. And God does use our trials, and he does use things in our lives to make us or not make us, he doesn't make us do anything. Well, he could if he wanted to, but we're not robots. He does use things in our lives And he allows things to happen. And we end up seeing the good come out of it much later, but not in the middle of it. And I think what Robin was saying and what that scripture in James is saying, can we go ahead and anticipate that when life sucks? Can we go ahead and say, God's gonna bring something amazing? This is very cool what I'm going through.

Sandy Kovach  [00:10:33]:
Can I

Lanée Blaise [00:10:33]:
do that?

Sandy Kovach  [00:10:34]:
We do that.

Lanée Blaise [00:10:35]:
We don't want to, take away, the human part of ourselves because we humans want what they want when they want it. And that is a part of our nature. And to try to overcome that a little bit at a time is the goal, and try to see the beauty in God's way versus our own way. But it's not easy. It's the whole part about being content when you are dealt a hand that you didn't want. And being hopeful that you will get to overcome that and move upward and over to the side.

Sandy Kovach  [00:11:14]:
Yeah. And some people, you know, I mean, the things that we recounted are very minimal and compared with what some people go through. And so everybody's gotta have their own timeline. And like you said, we can't minimize the human part of it. We also can't minimize the gravity of what some people go through and just say, oh, be joy. Yeah. Be grateful. Be grateful.

Lanée Blaise [00:11:36]:
I mean, we we get it. The whole purpose of this podcast is for us to try to be positive, but not in a frustrating way. Not something that that makes you like, I'm so sick of Sandy Lanee. Yes.

Sandy Kovach  [00:11:49]:
Would you guys shut up now.

Lanée Blaise [00:11:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. We're trying to, like, make sure that there's a balance. Actually, that's it too though, Sandy, To try to make sure there's a balance, to try to reevaluate some of the things. Just like my daughter did. Just like my kids did. It's not like they said, hey mom, you need to be more grateful and have more messy joy. But they did begin to say

Lanée Blaise [00:12:12]:
They didn't say that. No. Because I would've gone crazy.

Lanée Blaise [00:12:16]:
But what they did do is they tried to say, hey, take a look at this component and see where maybe there's a little nugget of good there. Just sit with that for a bit after you finish having your meltdown, which which I definitely had to finish that meltdown first. But, you know, and then it, you know, like coach Robin said, it is a practice where you do start to anticipate more and more good things. You do start to understand that God has a plan. It very likely is different from your Lanee, and you might be willing to trust God just enough to roll with it. In my opinion, many of the hardest ones like divorce or death of someone close or chronic illnesses and pain, I'm not going to throw any shade upon anyone who is in that season and does not feel willing to try to look for gratitude or joy right then. But I also must say that even people that you and I have had on the show before, sometimes it's very interesting how some of the people who have gone through the hardest things still manage to get up each morning and find something something little worth stepping out and giving it another shot another day again.

Sandy Kovach  [00:13:50]:
Absolutely.

Lanée Blaise [00:13:51]:
Yeah. I applaud those folks, and I have grace and prayers for the folks who aren't feeling that way.

Sandy Kovach  [00:13:58]:
Yeah. That's a good way to put it because everybody's situation is different. We wanna be encouraging, but we also wanna be empathetic and nonjudgmental. And I think that's kinda what we try to do. It's a hard mix sometimes on the podcast because sometimes people can be real motivational, but at the same time, they can have that little edge to them that if you're not doing this, then, you know, what's wrong with you? Or you can go in the other direction and you can be totally empathetic. But if you see some way to improve something, not say it. You said your daughter, she was in a position to say those words to you because, well, she's your daughter and you know she loves you and she has your best interest at heart. And that's another thing is if you're gonna speak into someone's life, they have to know that your intention is to help them.

Sandy Kovach  [00:14:45]:
What is it they say? People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You know, that's something for everyone to keep in mind. And, you know, of course, you and I as podcasters, we're giving this generic advice, but we're also passing along real experiences we've had and real experiences that our guests have had. And we're just saying, take this and whatever nugget you can find in it. We hope God speaks to you through that.

Lanée Blaise [00:15:08]:
That is true. That has one other element that I wanna make sure that we say and address here also. And it has to do with grace and it has to do with God. There's another component where sometimes people are going through such a hard and difficult patch in their life that they aren't really ready or willing to hear a whole lot about the faith walk and how good God is. And even though we have the best intentions when trying to give them that peace, we can just be mindful too that sometimes if we don't see their readiness to just jump on the bandwagon of, yes, god is good. God is gonna pull me out of this situation. Please give them grace and please know that a seed may have been planted there in a beautiful way That just may take a little more time to sprout without pushing in any way. I had a friend many, many years ago and she lost her dad.

Lanée Blaise [00:16:20]:
She was so close to him, and it was a very unexpected situation with circumstances that he passed away. And she just couldn't understand why God took her dad away and why did this have to happen and so quickly and without the time to say goodbye, and I'm going to admit, I really did jump in there like, you know, oh, well, God is your heavenly father, and he takes care of us, and you're gonna be okay. Because she wasn't ready for that. And I can look back now and say, I would definitely have done the whole thing differently. I probably would've just hugged her and just sat with her in the pain as a friend. And just in my heart and mind and spirit, I could've prayed over her without pushing that on her and without trying to make her see that, oh, you know, well, God does everything for a reason, and she wasn't trying to hear that. So I know this isn't exactly the direction we were planning to go on this episode.

Sandy Kovach  [00:17:28]:
No. That's just a very real thing. Yeah.

Lanée Blaise [00:17:30]:
It is. Right? It is something that really if you and I wanna make sure that that we have the whole imagine yourself aspect where we're trying to lift people up. There is a very mature stance that we need to remember to take sometimes, and a very gracious stance that we need to remember to take sometimes where we don't push even our heavenly father, the best of the best. God is amazing. We know that, but sometimes we just give a little space and a little time for the folks to heal before we jump into that. Of course, now hindsight, we can fast forward. That particular friend of mine has gone through even other trials in her life journey. And I don't think I know anybody else in my life who has more faith than that particular friend.

Sandy Kovach  [00:18:21]:
Wow.

Lanée Blaise [00:18:22]:
And so, you know, what a difference a few years can make, what a difference waiting for that seed to blossom can make. And so it definitely was not because of anything that I said back that years ago, being so kinda Lanee da, and all this kinda self righteous thinking. It was just that god did what god does to bring her closer to him, and it just took the time. You know, she and I are still friends to this day. She doesn't make me feel ashamed of the way that I did. She doesn't even mention it at all, but I remember it. And I know it. And I know to do differently because I do want to preserve the possibility of faith and hope in God for people.

Lanée Blaise [00:19:09]:
And sometimes that actually means not saying certain things.

Sandy Kovach  [00:19:14]:
That's true. But, you know, maybe you did plant a seed, and I think she probably didn't say anything. Of course, I don't even know her. So I'm completely supposing, right? She knows that you had good intentions. And it goes back to knowing that you care. So we do our best and sometimes we're going to mess up. I do it sometimes. I have the right thing to say and sometimes I don't have the right thing to say.

Sandy Kovach  [00:19:37]:
It's very hard. And I think we did a whole podcast on, you know, what to say and not to say, what people are going through hard times. That was a couple years back. But, you know, maybe we should link to it in this podcast because we've certainly spent a little time talking to, talking about it. And you were talking as a person who had just was it you knew lost your stepmom.

Lanée Blaise [00:19:55]:
That was when I lost my stepmom. And I remember I don't know. I'm I'm an interesting person. I was telling different people. So in my case, I knew that she was deteriorating. Her health was deteriorate. And I was telling people, so when this day comes that she is likely gonna pass away, do not say a, b, and c to

Lanée Blaise [00:20:16]:
me because yours not know what

Lanée Blaise [00:20:19]:
to I already knew. Don't save these particular ABC cliches. And that's kinda what I mentioned on that podcast episode to try you know, everybody's different, of course, everybody's wired differently, but I kinda started to get that. Yeah. These are the things that most people do not want to hear at least within the 1st few months of their loved one passing away. And it's something that sometimes people think would be very helpful and and they've heard it before, but I was like, you might wanna rethink it because, you know, the goal is definitely for people to eventually get back to their joy and eventually get back to their sense of gratitude and eventually get back to, you know, who they were before all the bad stuff happened. But it takes patience and it takes space. Yeah.

Lanée Blaise [00:21:13]:
That's a good one to refer back to. Because even in the messy joy and the messy gratitude, we don't wanna add to this.

Sandy Kovach  [00:21:20]:
Right. Just you know? And pray about it. If you don't know what to say, pray about it. The Bible says God will give you wisdom if you ask. And if you make a mistake, you make a mistake. It's hard. And it's hard for people who are going through it too. And I think they truly do know if someone cares for them, if what they're saying, it may or may not be the best thing.

Sandy Kovach  [00:21:43]:
But do try. Do try. And I do highly recommend that episode because you were speaking from direct experience. And I know that there are probably people out there right now listening that may be going through something, and this is resonating with them. So for those people, have patience with your friends who may not be saying the right thing. And for people who might have someone in their life going through something, remember what Lanee was just saying.

Lanée Blaise [00:22:07]:
Yeah. This episode, we I guess we kinda did I know that, coach Joy.

Sandy Kovach  [00:22:13]:
The joy coach.

Lanée Blaise [00:22:14]:
Gosh. That's

Sandy Kovach  [00:22:14]:
okay. Yeah. Coach Joy.

Lanée Blaise [00:22:16]:
Coach the

Sandy Kovach  [00:22:17]:
I was calling her coach messy. ,

Lanée Blaise [00:22:20]:
coach messy. Coach. But, no, coach Robin, the joy coach, She told us before we recorded, I don't know if you remember Sandy. She said that she wanted God to hijack the entire episode and make sure that we all said exactly what God want it to be spread out so that it would land on whoever is out here listening that it's supposed to land upon. So I kind of feel like that's what happened, especially just now on this episode. Because we started off super positive talking about how to make joy or gratitude out of a messy situation. And then we kind of went all the way over to making sure that we don't frustrate someone more by trying to force them to make joy and gratitude out of a messy situation.

Sandy Kovach  [00:23:13]:
Both ends. We gotta find the happy middle as they say.

Lanée Blaise [00:23:16]:
Yeah. Because I truly believe that there is some at least one person listening right now who is like, I feel seen and heard right now by this episode because I am going through something, and I don't just wanna hear any more cliche stuff. And maybe like you said, that will help them to have a little patience with the folks. Because if you haven't been through a certain thing, you don't understand. You're trying to be sympathetic, but you sometimes don't know exactly what you're saying and doing and how that's affecting. And, of course, like I said, people are still different to the way they do things. But all this to say, lots of grace. Grace when you're going through it.

Lanée Blaise [00:24:00]:
Grace when you're hearing it from others. My friend Desiree, she even has a t shirt she gave me, but she says, grace yourself.

Sandy Kovach  [00:24:07]:
Oh, yeah.

Lanée Blaise [00:24:08]:
Yeah. She's a fellow podcaster also. But, yeah, grace yourself and grace others.

Sandy Kovach  [00:24:14]:
Absolutely. Grace, grace, and more grace. You can never find too much grace. I heard somebody say about giving grace. Do you need grace right now? And you probably say yes. Then give that to other people.

Sandy Kovach  [00:24:28]:
Because sometimes we can get that edge on us, so we can get that, well, I wouldn't do it that way kind of thing. But you gotta give yourself grace. Gotta give other people grace.

Lanée Blaise [00:24:37]:
Yeah. Little grace and little space. And and that's why I kinda refer to the fact that over the holidays, like I said, I I had a meltdown. I fussed everybody in the household, and they kinda, like, sent me to my room. This is, like, mainly my daughter sent me to my room and let me kinda decompress. And then she said the things that she said when she believed that I had a little bit more room for a better outlook that I could put in my mind.

Sandy Kovach  [00:25:04]:
Did you just say your daughter sent you to your room?

Lanée Blaise [00:25:06]:
Yes, ma'am. She sure did. I was acting a fool.

Lanée Blaise [00:25:12]:
I needed it. I needed to

Lanée Blaise [00:25:14]:
be and and it's that whole thing, you know, mom, you need to go to your room and take a little nap. And when you come back up, we'll give you something to eat and get you back on your feet. Like, because I used to do that to her. I used to tell her, oh my goodness. You are you're just spiraling out. You need to take a nap, and then when you wake up, we're gonna feed you. You're gonna take yourself a nice shower, and you're gonna be all better. So yes.

Sandy Kovach  [00:25:39]:
You taught her well.

Lanée Blaise [00:25:40]:
Yeah. So now it's coming back to me. But yeah. So I think we covered all the things.

Sandy Kovach  [00:25:46]:
All the things.

Lanée Blaise [00:25:48]:
Yeah. All the things that have to do with the messy joy and messy gratitude. So as you walk away from this episode, we hope that you have been blessed by it. We hope that you understand that our intentions were for the best. But overall, we hope that you imagine yourself expecting, experiencing, and practicing great amounts of messy joy and messy gratitude.

Sandy Kovach  [00:26:14]:
Thank you so much for hanging out with us for these few minutes during imagine yourself. If you, wanna look into this subject a little more, of course, we talked a lot about the previous episode with Robin Shear. We'll link that up in the show notes, as well as the one that we referred to what to say and not to say to someone going through tough times. Your feedback is coveted. We'd love to hear what you thought of the episode. You can leave us a rating or review. We'd really appreciate that too. It helps other people discover the podcast as well as us being able to put a good direction on ours.

Sandy Kovach  [00:26:50]:
Tells us what you re really wanna hear and maybe what isn't as helpful. We'd love it if you would join our social media family too. You can find all of the links in the show notes or on our website, which is also a great place to reach out at imagine yourself podcast dot com.