If you’ve been around for long, you may have noticed I’m obsessed with delight. And you may be wondering what in the world it has to do with wellness. How could something that sometimes sounds so frivolous and… fun? apply to our well-being? You’re not outlandish for asking the question. Heck, I did, too. And these are my thoughts on the matter to date… I’m sure there will be a part 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. 

Join me on a journey for a minute. 

Speaking from personal experience, I have put so much pressure on myself to get physically “better.” Healthy. Healed. 

I have nearly knocked down the door of Heaven asking the Lord to heal my physical symptoms. To heal my body, my autoimmune diseases, my whole person. And God, being God, answered in some unexpected ways. 

Instead of starting with an immediate physical healing, He’s taken me down a path with lots of twists and turns. It’s been a journey that, if I’m being honest, I did not always want or feel like I asked for. So I’d quietly repeat my prayer for a body that functioned like all my friends. For energy. For a thyroid, brain, and gut that functioned how they were designed to. 

As I look back on my adventure with the Lord through all the ups and downs of living in a body on this side of Heaven, I wouldn’t change a thing. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but now I do. I know and wholeheartedly believe the reward isn’t a perfectly functioning body—it’s Him. And it’s delighting in Him. It’s the beautiful, intimate, glorious, and personal bond we have with Him that can never be shaken. That love will last forever. A different earthly body will not.

So I decided to press in, bit by bit, step by step. Eventually, I found myself moving stride for stride with the Spirit, open to His direction and insight and whispers in the night, guiding me toward how I could best care for my body, mind, and soul—because wellness is ALL of us, not just the numbers on a lab report or the scale. 

He’s led me to a boatload of research and teaching about how our bodies store so much unseen energy, emotions, traumas, negative thoughts, pain, and discontentment. I won’t unpack it all here, but essentially, our bodies bear all of our burdens in ways we may not ever fully understand. You may have heard the phrase “the body keeps the score” or read that revolutionary work by Bessel Van Der Kolk. I truly believe it stretches beyond our major (or capital T) trauma. Our outlook on life, whether positive or negative, truly and deeply affects our physical health. Just as the Trinity is connected and one being, so are the different facets of our health and well-being. 

The fact I’m sharing these findings with you is a little ironic. I have not always been one to believe the best or have the most positive outlook in any given room. I may have even been known to sulk or dwell on hard, painful circumstances and get caught in whirlpools of self-pity. I’ve wrestled through plenty of seasons of depression. While I believe deep in my bones depression is not just a matter of thinking positive thoughts—it is truly a physical, chemical imbalance and issue, in severe cases not letting one think positively at all—I do think my negative thought patterns were keeping me stuck in a spiral of autoimmune symptoms. Or at the very least, making my symptoms feel way bigger and much more exacerbated than they truly were. In His kindness, Jesus slowly showed me this roadblock in my road to wholeness and healing. 

So now we return to delight. What does it have to do with any of this? What does it have to do with our well-being?

After sifting through my decade-long health journey, I don’t think delight is a part of our well-being. I believe it’s the key to our well-being. 

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” -Proverbs 37:4

I believed I wanted a healthy, newly functioning body, but what I truly desired was to be whole. To truly, actually fully live—body, mind, and soul. And I’ve found this verse to be so true as it’s played out in my life. As I’ve delighted myself in Him, He has given me that desire to live vibrantly, wholly, and authentically, no matter my physical state. He is faithful. So friends, let this testimony bring honor to His name. 

Where we put our mind, sight, and vision will often dictate much of our overall health. The practice of delighting in the Lord brings deep, lasting healing. It produces joy, vibrancy, beauty, wonder, gratitude, intimacy, perspective, creativity, a sound mind, liveliness, and more. And that goodness will help our bodies follow suit. Today, 90% of chronic disease is caused by stress. So, nearly all diseases. The thing is, I’ve found it’s pretty hard to stress, worry, and fret while delighting in the Lord. Thanking Him for our blessings and noticing the good around us lights up a completely different part of our brain. I am confident that if our generation shifted from stress to delight, we’d move from sick to well, dead to alive. 

So. What does this mean for you and for me? How do we delight in the Lord? Is this even practical? I think it’s actually really simple. 

I think we notice.

I think we keep our magnifying glasses in our back pockets and scour our daily lives for goodness, beauty, blessing, and joy. When we find it–because we will—we take note of it, keeping a record of our daily delights. 

Finally, and essentially, I think we give credit and thanks to God, whom all good things flow from. 

If we’re getting granular here, these are some of the things I delight in the Lord for:

• A new song or album I love
• The time spent with my husband
• The tangerine, peachy hues of the sunset
• A great parking spot at Trader Joe’s
• That unexpected, sweet text from a friend
• Ripe, juicy blueberries
• The sight of snow falling + the silence that accompanies it
• The joy of a fun outfit combo
• Morning coffee with a splash of cream
• When the dog rests her chin on my lap 
• A new journal that slowly but surely fills up 
• Belly laughter shared with friends

All these things fill my soul. But I could blast past them if I’m not careful—if I don’t keep my magnifying glass handy. I recognize that these things cannot bring eternal satisfaction on their own, but they point me to the One who can, and that’s why I’m obsessed with noting them, celebrating them, and then thanking God for their intricate, minute beauties. 

This practice has changed every part of my life. I believe it can for you, too. So what does delight have to do with wellness? Well, everything.