I bought the wooden sign in the clearance aisle at Home Goods, red with white lettering that spelled the word, JOY. Rustic in its simplicity, behold, a visceral sign to remind me of what I must prioritize more than anything this holiday season.
I took it home and displayed it on the dining table, next to the wooden Nutcracker and ceramic Santa Clauses.
Can I be honest?
Lately I feel more fear than joy.
Bad things have happened to people I love. We suffered two tragic, fatal accidents within our family in the same year. Now, two widowed aunts.
Last year, the Tubbs Fire threatened my childhood community and burned down Redwood Academy, a place with personal history for me, leaving an empty hole in the lives of my sister, niece and nephews who currently teach at and attend the elementary.
This year, another wildfire hits too close to home for this Northern CA native. I hear one heartbreaking story after another of friends who lost everything. Extended families remain displaced because they lost not one but two, three or four homes within one family, so where is left to gather and be together at Christmastime? I respond to one plea on Facebook for an empty house to “borrow” for the holidays because relatives need to be with each other now more than ever, preferably in a space larger than a hotel room. Paradise lost.
Don’t get me started on the bad things happening in our own country, let alone the rest of the world.
Last year I hear of the school shooting in Florida on the way to pick up my first-grader from La Sierra Elementary school. I am weeping as I pull into the drive-thru. I can too easily imagine being one of those parents desperate to pick up precious littles from school, wondering if they are dead or alive.
I have to guard my heart from the 24/7 barrage of bad news—more shootings, nasty political punditry, cruel policies resulting in parents and children separated by a border. An audio recording of traumatized children at a detention center crying hysterically for their parents leaves me shattered. Then, only a few short months later I attend the funeral of a church member, a mother not much older than I with two children not much older than mine. She was diagnosed with cancer while vacationing with her family in Australia. Her battle was short. I didn’t know her well, though we sat in the same Cradle Roll and Tiny Tots and Kindergarten Sabbath School classes off and on over the years. I weep for her. I fear for me.
Fear, or more accurately, worry, has never been a stranger to me. I distinctly remember hiding under my parents’ dining table the eve of my fifth birthday, lamenting how much I would miss being four! In second grade, I worried, without cause, that my parents would forget to pick me up from school. I still struggle with an anxiety disorder that compels me to fumble for joy in the darkest spaces of my mind.
I’ve learned that Anxiety is the unrepentant thief of Joy. For me, some of life’s greatest joys are prefaced with dread—planning birthday parties, attending large social gatherings, new experiences, looming change.
In 1 John, I’m told: “Perfect Love casts out all Fear.” But I wonder if that’s true?
I’ve sat watching ER doctors with trembling hands attempt to administer a spinal tap to a six-year-old with symptoms of viral meningitis. I’ve wrung my hands in despair over an infant who suddenly and unexpectedly stops nursing at three months old. I’m unable to pump enough milk to feed her, and I cannot soothe her hunger cries. Parenting has taught me about a love simultaneously perfect and perfectly terrifying, about a love so strong it keeps me awake at night with worry.
So, if perfect love is not the anecdote to fear, what is?
The Advent story unfurls, a promise made to Abraham, to Moses and the Israelites, to David, even to foreigners vulnerable to invasion like Rahab—a promise to fear not, until its anthem rings loud and clear in a choir of heavenly angels:
“Do not be afraid. I bring you good tidings of great joy that will be for all people. Today, in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11)
Advent joy is not merely a piece of good news, finally some good PR in a volatile world. The joy the angel Gabriel speaks of is JOY incarnate. Immanuel. God With Us. And it’s no coincidence the “joy for all people” he speaks of refers to a baby. A baby understands fear, but a baby also understands surrender.
Every year my girls and I read Ann Voskamp’s, Unwrapping the Greatest Gift. The topic for December 2 is creation, and I have this conversation with them:
“Did you know we are created in the image of God? What does that mean?”
“We’re made with clay,” says Vivienne, my eight-year-old artist.
“And love!” Violette, age four, chimes in.
Voskamp articulates what I know in my bones to be true. We are made of “both the dust of this earth and the happiness of highest heaven…and two worlds longing for forever with Jesus.” We are designed to be wowed by God’s love imprinted on every fiber of creation.
Perhaps the greatest gift we can give back to God is to let His love make us glad.
Surrender . . .
Try as I might (curse you, Pinterest), I cannot manufacture, purchase or schedule Joy for my family during the holidays. My attempt to create the illusion of perfection for a Christmas card photo shoot is anything but joyful for my family.
Instead, Joy surfaces when I least expect it. It ambushes me the way a certain gray and white Maine coon kitten hops on her snowy white hind legs and pounces me every time I descend the staircase.
Joy delights like the marshmallows, mini chocolate chips and whipped cream that garnish a child’s hot cocoa—at breakfast—thanks to a doting aunt—because sisters and their offspring celebrate every opportunity to be together for a precious few days each year.
I feel immense Joy in telling my father that we might as well dig into the pecan pie the night before Thanksgiving because our stomachs have more space to digest it, and because, after all, the ratio of pies to adults is very much in our favor this year.
Joy is a conversation over good coffee with a great friend, and two simple words, “I know,” and she really does know exactly how I feel.
Parents of very young children understand each night at bedtime that Joy is a paradox—a battle of wills—tears, threats, yes, occasional yelling. Then Joy creeps in under the veil of darkness and cozy blankets as we snuggle and whisper sweet nothings. Violette croons, “Mommy, you are my most precious treasure. I love you more than a hundred kisses. I love you more than Disneyland.”
Tonight, Violette and I sit together for a brief moment, watching a Christmas movie. She entwines her fingers with mine, looks over at me and whispers, “I love that we’re together.” Me too.
Joy fills my heart to the brim as the first melodious notes of Jesu Bambino echo from a sea of youth violins on stage before me at Vivi’s strings concert last week.
Immanuel. God With Us.
Joy is not always sophisticated, but it is always Sacred.
May we surrender to Joy this holiday season. May it visit us when we least expect it and envelop us when we most need it.
Be Well.