Unreasonable Joy
Here’s what I know to be true:
Joy and grief can co-exist.
No, not just that.
Let me try it again…
Joy and grief necessarily co-exist.
They are two sides of the same coin, just as love and grief are inextricably linked.
When I am in the deepest of pits, joy is my great rescuer.
When I am heavy with sorrow and overwhelmed by the sting of loss, joy is my hallelujah.
When I am flat on my face, laughter is my best medicine.
And I’m here to say from the pit this morning :: if you find yourself there too :: joy is not out of the equation for you. The two (seemingly polar opposites) do not stand against one another. Truly, they stand together, in a mutual-support kind of lean-to lattice for your soul.
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As I sat down (just about a month ago) to think about what might be my prophetic claim for the year (or my “word” for the year, if you will), as I do every year… one word initially jumped to the front of my mind - “predictability.”
Ha, this was the word at the tip of my tongue. “Predictability.”
That is for certain the first time that word has ever come out of my mouth. I swear to you on it. Spontaneity, growth, adventure, risk, life by the seat of my pants — these are the language bits of my heart. Ooh, I have a love for spicy. Not predictability. Gah. What kind of bland life is that.
But after a year in which our neurodivergent daughter struggled violently and my very best helper — my mom — was taken from me by the cruel and unpredictable beast of cancer, predictability — stability — control — sameness — are words that sound safe and comforting for the first time.
I wrote it down.
“Predictability.”
I had no sooner finished the “y” when already my spirit began to groan.
Predictability, yes, that is safety. No surprises would be lovely.
But in deep grief, are safety and predictability enough? Are they the reward and refuge I seek?
I finished the “y,” and immediately began to scratch the word through, crossing it out.
Something deeper, something truer, something more compatible with the groan of my soul, emerged instead: I wrote, “Joy.” “Boatloads and boatloads of joy.”
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A year and a half ago, I had a dream. I’m not one into dreams, if we can be honest, but this one was remarkable and I remember sharing it far and wide with friends — treasuring it, pondering it, wondering about it.
In the dream, I gave birth to a child (mind you - I’ve had a hysterectomy). The birth was all sorts of wrong. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong people around me, wildly painful. She barely made it - the child - but she was born.
The woman who delivered her, placed her in my arms and asked me what her name was. I remember looking down at her — deep and long, with tears streaming down my face in the dream, and I said confidently, boldly, announced to the room — “Elisa Joy.”
“Elisa means “God is a promise” and Joy because “the joy of the Lord is my strength” and “he has turned my mourning into dancing’.”
I woke up right away that morning with these words on the tip of my tongue, “God has promised and joy will come.”
I wrote it all down. I shared it with friends. I wondered if a baby was on its way (via foster care or adoption, or some other God-sized miracle).
And then I left it, buried it in a prayer journal - treasured there, but forgotten for another day.
—-
Today is that day.
I think that dream did have significance to be reaped for now.
“God is a promise.”
“The joy of the Lord is my strength.”
“He has turned my mourning into dancing.”
After a season of terrible violence and terrible loss — in circumstances and with people that just feel wrong-to-the-core — I have made it out and in 2024, in the midst of grief and need for safe harbor and refuge, God whispered again to my soul at the birth of a new year—
“I have promised and joy will come.”
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Joy is the claim to those that love the Lord.
And the beauty of this promise is that it comes IN the pain, WITH grief, not despite it or over top of it or to cover it like some bandaid of false positivity.
I am not ready to abandon my grief. It is my love for my mom and I’m hanging onto it for now - my stake and my claim that tether me to her.
But here, in this space, of prickly feels, and sudden chest-arrests when I find myself gasping for breath at newly uncovered memories, here in this sacred space of tear-stained cheeks — I lay claim, too, to the joy of the Lord that is my inheritance, that is promised (in boatloads) in our heartbreak (not despite it).
“Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant, but they sing as they return.” - Psalm 126:5-6.
Or as a favorite song says it,
“It’s gonna rain joy, it’s gonna rain joy, seep right through my skin, down into my bones, it’s gonna rain joy, it’s gonna rain joy, filling up my heart, right down to my soul, it’s gonna rain joy...” (White as Snow, Cageless Birds)
Joy is what I’m declaring over this year — even in the midst of what will be a year of journeying through grief and the integration of incredible heartbreak.
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And speaking of song, my friends, I noticed, in the first few weeks of the year, that “my song” has returned.
Those who know me, know that I create show-tunes all day long in my house and sing at the top of my lungs (if you didn’t know this tidbit about me previously - now you do… the soundtrack to my life is show-tunes). Javi and the girls roll their eyes at me or laugh at me (depending on their mood and tolerance for shenanigans), but my little guy is equally as enthused about show-tunes as I am and he’s almost-always creating them alongside me as I fiddle around the house.
In the first week of the new year, he requested that we watch The Sound of Music together and since, we’ve been signing, “Do Re Mi” and “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things” together every night before bedtime.
It was sometime thereafter that one afternoon I noticed that I was singing in my kitchen again, as I was preparing food.
I started crying. Because I don’t remember when I stopped singing — when I lost my tune.
I know it was sometime in the madness of the second half of last year, but I can’t place when, and I didn’t realize that I even had.
But in that kitchen, that afternoon, the joy of singing with my boy at night, had re-awakened again the song within me.
And there it was… joy.
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KJ Ramsey said it recently like this “the goodness that is here nourishes me to endure the grief that remains.”
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I am architecting this year around an infrastructure of it-makes-no-sense joy, because as I grieve, I am confident, that I will experience boatloads of unreasonable joy.