Choosing Joy in Hard Places
A cackle.
That’s the only way I can accurately describe the laughter of my 8-year-old sister. It fills the room with a sort of maniacal joy, making even the stuffiest adult let loose a snicker. Maybe something about the sound itself makes everyone laugh along with her, or maybe it’s the way we can see the emotion move like a wave through her body. Maybe it’s because we miss the days when laughter came that easily to us, and just for a moment, we want to remember what it felt like before we became too grown up to freely display our joy like that.
I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but I know I want what she’s having.
Understanding the world, even though we never really understand it, is a heavy burden that walks side-by-side with adulthood. I began today by trying to compile some thoughts about the sad but unsurprising events at the U.S. Capitol last week. I’ve never been one to avoid hard conversations with friends or family, and I don’t want to be that type of writer, either. The thing is, as I wrote, I found myself reflecting again and again on the power of the words we share with others, so I decided to use that power differently today.
I decided to share a gentle reminder that we have the power to choose joy.
Even in the heaviness.
Even when it doesn’t make sense.
We still have the power to choose it.
Joy is a complex emotion we often attempt to simplify. From a young age, we are socialized to be binary thinkers - right and wrong, good and bad - but mastering joy takes a willingness to live in the gray rather than the black or white. Joy isn’t mutually exclusive from our negative emotions, it exists alongside them. In spite of them.
Last year, I was one of the many affected by the sweeping COVID layoffs, and I found myself unemployed for months. At first, I felt inadequate and broken. I worried about my future and paying the bills and everything in between, but somewhere along the way, God helped me realize there were joys to be found in losing my job, too. The joy of new opportunities. The joy of trusting more fully in His provision. The joy of living more slowly and intentionally. Was it still hard? Absolutely. Did I still have to fight those negative feelings? You bet. But joy was a scrappy teammate to have in my corner, and I think the more I fought with joy in my midst, the better I got at using it as a weapon.
Today, I’d like to remind you of this: even if your most dominant feeling is negative, you can still choose joy. For me, joy is found in Jesus, in knowing I was made by love to love, made by glory to glorify. In knowing that I am still a child even though the things I carry are heavy, that I have a Father who willingly holds the heavy things I give him and laughs along with me when I cackle wildly despite my circumstances.
It’s possible I’ll share what I wrote about the events at the U.S. Capitol another day, but for now, my prayer is that you can choose a new type of joy in the present moment. Read something silly, create a piece of imperfect art, thank God for the good things in life, or take a walk and smile with the trees, all while knowing that joy exists right where you are.
You just have to choose it.
