Our Parallel Tracks

Good morning…

Last Monday morning, the room was abuzz with the voices of about fifty to sixty women. Catching up. Sharing stories. Starting a new school year. I felt honored to be the kick-off speaker for the Lovett Moms in Prayer group, an annual commitment I enjoy every fall.

Each year, I prayerfully consider what I feel led to share. This year, I asked myself, “If I knew I was going to die, what final message would I want to leave this group? What thought, what quote, what insight might be most lasting and impactful?”

I thought about it for weeks. Overtime, I sensed God’s answer. “Parallel train tracks.”

I went to my shelf and found Choose Joy: Because Happiness isn’t Enough by Kay Warren. I flipped to page 27 and returned to these life-changing words.

I used to think that life came in waves: There was a wave of good and pleasant circumstances followed by a wave of bad and unpleasant circumstances, with a lot of ebb and flow in between. Or life was a series of hills and valleys; sometimes we’re up, then we’re down. But I’ve come to realize that life is much more like a set of parallel train tracks, with joy and sorrow running inseparably throughout our days. 

Every day of your life good things happen. Beauty, pleasure, fulfillment, and perhaps even excitement occur. That’s the track of joy. But every day of your life also holds disappointments, challenges, struggles, and perhaps even losses for you or those you love. That’s the track of sorrow. Most of us try to “outsmart” the sorrow track by concentrating our efforts on the joy track, as if by our positive outlook or outright denial of reality we can make the sorrow track go away. That’s impossible, because joy and sorrow will always be linked. And in the strange paradox of the universe, at the exact moment you and I are experiencing pain, we are also aware of the sweetness of loving and the beauty still to be found. Likewise, at the exact same moment we are full of delirious delight, we have the nagging realization that things aren’t quite perfect. No matter how “positive” we think or how hard we try to visualize only happiness, the sorrow track remains. One of the toughest challenges in life is to learn how to live on both of those tracks at the same time.

…As we stand on the tracks and stare into the distant, bright horizon, those parallel tracks become one, no longer distinguishable as two separate tracks… During our life time, we “stand on the tracks” waiting for signs of Jesus Christ’s return… One day, in the brightness of his coming, we will meet him face to face. And when we do, the tracks of joy and sorrow will merge. The sorrow will disappear forever, and only the joy will remain. And everything will make complete sense. But until that day comes, we live with the parallel tracks of joy…and sorrow.

Before I read this quote to the roomful of Lovett moms, I had the women break up into groups of two or three to share one joy they anticipate as they head into this new school year and one sorrow they also hold in their hearts. Bonding together, acknowledging our inseparable joys and sorrows, we learned about our parallel train tracks running side by side, every day of our earthly lives.

Flipping to page 30, I read out loud Kay Warren’s empowering definition of joy.

Joy is the settled assurance

that God is in control

of all the details of my life,

the quiet confidence

that ultimately everything

is going to be all right,

and the determined choice

to praise God in all things.

Then, I shared with the women the front and back of the original painting which hangs in my closet as a daily reminder, a gift given to me by the Lovett Senior Mom Bible Study Group in 2014.