Back to the Garden: How Joy Reveals Who You’ve Always Been
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Editor’s Note: This piece reflects a moment of spiritual stillness after prolonged healing — a reminder that joy is not manufactured, chased, or earned, but uncovered as false coverings fall away. If you are still in the valley, this is not a demand to “feel better,” but a promise of what lies on the other side.
I woke up this morning not chasing anything.
No answers.
No clarity.
No relief.
And yet — there it was.
A deep, settled calm.
A quiet joy.
A sense that everything, finally, is right.
Not euphoric.
Not hyped.
Not the fragile happiness that depends on circumstances behaving themselves.
But something older.
Something truer.
Something that feels like coming home.
It felt like skipping through a meadow in the sunshine — light, free, unburdened — and I realised what it was.
It felt like Eden.
After the valley
For a long time, I walked through what Scripture calls the valley of the shadow of death.
Not metaphorically.
Not poetically.
Actually.
Loss.
Grief.
Betrayal.
Homelessness.
The collapse of family.
The stripping away of identity, security, and belonging.
I didn’t bypass it.
I didn’t numb it.
I didn’t pretend it wasn’t happening.
I walked straight through it.
And now — on the other side — I see something I couldn’t see before.
The valley didn’t destroy me.
It removed what was never truly me.
Joy is not something you find — it’s something you uncover
We are taught to seek happiness.
To strive for joy.
To chase peace.
To “work on ourselves” until we’re finally allowed to feel okay.
But that’s not what Scripture teaches.
Jesus never said, “Go and find joy.”
He said:
“The kingdom of God is within you.”
Luke 17:21
Joy isn’t external.
It isn’t earned.
It isn’t achieved through self-improvement.
It is what remains when everything false falls away.
I’m realising now that joy is not the reward for healing.
It is the natural state that emerges when healing is complete.
Becoming like a child again
There’s a reason children feel so alive.
So present.
So embodied.
So joyful for no particular reason at all.
Jesus said:
“Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3
He wasn’t talking about immaturity.
He was talking about unburdened being.
Children don’t carry inherited shame.
They don’t carry other people’s projections.
They don’t live fractured from themselves.
They live before the covering.
The Garden was never lost — it was covered
In Genesis, before fear, before hiding, before shame, we are told:
“God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.”
Genesis 1:31
Joy didn’t disappear after the fall.
It was covered — by fear, trauma, conditioning, and lies.
And this is what I see so clearly now:
Healing is not becoming someone new.
It is removing what never belonged.
Peeling back the layers of:
• shame that was handed down
• fear that was projected
• responsibility that was never ours
• identities that were imposed rather than chosen
And underneath it all?
Joy.
Peace.
Lightness.
Wholeness.
The joy of the Lord is strength
This joy doesn’t feel fragile.
It feels steady.
Grounded.
Strong.
Scripture says:
“The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Nehemiah 8:10
Strength doesn’t come from effort.
It comes from alignment.
From being who you were created to be before the world taught you to brace.
Beauty instead of ashes
Isaiah describes this exchange perfectly:
“To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of joy instead of mourning.”
Isaiah 61:3
Ashes don’t mean the fire went out.
They mean the fire was buried.
Remove the ashes — and the flame is already there.
Back to Eden — within
This joy doesn’t mean life is perfect.
It means I am no longer at war with myself.
I am not chasing peace.
I am resting in truth.
I am not striving to become whole.
I am remembering that I already am.
The Garden was never somewhere I had to return to externally.
It was always within me — waiting for the coverings to fall away.
And this morning, I woke up and realised:
I’m back in the Garden.
Not because life is easy.
But because I am free.
And freedom feels like joy.
“You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
— Psalm 16:11
With fire and grace,
This message carries fire. Pass it on. 👇🏻
Victoria Player is the founder of Daughter of Thunder, a movement awakening spiritually sensitive women to truth, purpose, and divine power in a world that’s lost its compass. After walking through her own season of fire and rebuilding, she now writes and speaks to those who sense there’s more — guiding them from confusion to clarity, from awakening to assignment.
“I don’t bow to Babylon — I walk with the Lion.” — Daughter of Thunder
