GriefHope

Help for today & Hope for tomorrow

Wanted: 1 human allotment of joy, gone missing about 10 months ago, deeply missed.  Glimpsed briefly on occasion but darted away again.  If seen, grab it and hold on tightly. 

Joy.  What does it mean?  How do we find it and better question, how to we hang on to it?  A couple of months back, some of my family and I were on a shuttle bus, being transported like cattle from one end to the other of a resort along with a couple of other families.  Most of the riders were lost in their own thoughts and it was fairly quiet.  All of a sudden, my little 3 year old granddaughter says, as if to herself, “It’s a great day to be on a bus!”  Her lilting voice caught everyone’s attention.  Her eyes were bright and her face was open and smiling.  People all over the shuttle laughed or giggled and nodded to each other.  From that point forward, there was conversation, laughter, and a lot more interaction.  Such an innocent moment, so full of . . . what was the word again?  Joy.  That was it.  Simple, unadulterated joy. 

I could follow that illustration with a discussion about an absence of joy from my life and how difficult it is to try and get it back.  But that’s boring and repetitive.  What’s really interesting is the concept of joy the purpose it serves in our lives.  It’s such an ambiguous term.  Is there a difference between happiness, contentment, peace, and joy?  Sure there is.  Which comes first?  Is one required to achieve the others?  Am I a happy person?  Not right at the moment.  There’s nothing about the way I’m living my life right now that really makes me happy.  Stepping outside myself and trying to look at it objectively, I see that I have been very busy with distractions.  I’ve travelled a lot, spent too much money, started and not finished things, and stayed up too late at night because I didn’t want to go to bed.  I didn’t want to close my eyes to sleep for several reasons.  If I gave in and tried to sleep, I would be giving up on that day, acknowledging that yet another 24 hours had passed with him.  It seems ridiculous, but not letting go of that day meant I was closer to the time before I was without him.  Every day that passed increased the distance between the life I knew and pushed me towards the life unknown. 

It’s really terrifying to be hurtling towards the undiscovered.  Like an astronaut, having been flung from the earth, each day that passes finds me travelling with increasing speed toward whatever the second half of my life will bring.  The difference is, the astronaut chose his or her journey.  I did not.  So no, I am not happy currently.  But I have found some peace on occasion and I am less often afraid to sleep.  I have moments of contentment and, dare I say, joy – particularly in the presence of my precious grandchildren.  I’ve found that their innocence, their pure delight in the everyday is actually contagious.  They are way better than therapy.  Granted, they are not around 24/7 and I cannot presume to lay the burden of my happiness and joy at their little feet.  But they help.  And what’s really awesome is they have no idea.  They don’t try to make me feel better.  They don’t ask me if there’s anything they can do.  They just . . . be.

I have outrageous demands and expectations of this life.  I expect to learn more languages.  I expect to have a new and satisfying career.  I expect to travel to most of the continents.  I expect to dance at my granddaughter’s weddings.  I expect learn what the destiny is that God has planned for me and to do my best to fulfill it. I expect to be amazed, challenged, confounded, startled, tested, thrilled, and yes, I expect to find my joy again.  

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