holding to joy

 

Joy finds me today in the notice that someone somewhere is having a baby.  I don’t know the person, but I know a person who knows a person and so I smile and that happy giddy full chest feeling fills my otherwise struggling and anxious person.  Joy and I have been getting better acquainted other the last weeks, God mastered the greeting and now we are sitting awkwardly across the table from each other exchanging truth for my battered excuses. 

I confess, I am much better acquainted with anxiety and worry – it is often a surprise for others to learn this as I am usually pretty good at covering up my swirling inner world and I portray a rather calm and peaceful outer sense. (Perhaps not such a surprise to those who have read here for any length of time – my words carry with them my heart.)

I used to call my chameleon-ism – survival as it proved useful when one’s upbringing was a whirling world of mess and chaos to be viewed as stable and therefore beneath the radar.  But my life is no longer just the sum of my childhood, I have accumulated a number of grown years now and it is time to come out from behind my face.  Or more precisely, God is calling me out.  It is uncomfortable and raw. 

Early this January I fell upon a Francis Chan video regarding clinging to our safety nets and I was captivated.  I soon found myself listening to his podcasts, found an early series he has done on “Living with Joy”  and I am working my way through them.  Then I found myself reading the memory challenge I’ve been toying with and got stuck on Colossians 1 :9-14 (Paul’s prayer) – I wanted what he was praying for – I wanted to know, to be filled, to bear fruit, to be strong, to have endurance and patience, and Joyfully give thanks.  I didn’t want to be brought to tears every time I prayed or sang or thought to deeply – big sorrowful, repentant tears.  I want to hold to joy – to bring it into the dark and charred corners of myself – I want my tears to fall in gladness and in un-tethered abandon.  I was excited.

Then I got notice that our house is being sold and we need to move – soon, in the middle of the school year, with seven years of accumulated stuff, a basement full of junk.  Shaken and uprooted – I stumble and I fall hard upon my habit of worry and anxiety, then I get up and I struggle to get back to the joy, and the cycle repeats.  But I am holding fast today -in this moment -to the joy about to enter into the world, hearts afire with new life, new beginnings. 

I sing Your praises – as all creation sings …