Anticipate joy
Advent, Week Three: Joy
In order to reflect on what it means to wait in the darkness — and there seek hope, peace, joy, and love — I’m committing to write something here each week until Christmas. Consider this field notes on those four themes. I invite you to join me, in the darkening days of a Pacific Northwest winter, watching and waiting for signs of light.
“Only when we travel to the depths of our sorrow do we discover a joy that we thought was impossible.”- Becoming Neighbours
One thing I’ve learned through writing a book is that you end up with words out there in the world, attributed to your name, that you actually have to…well…live by.
During my years of neighbouring and being neighboured by refugee claimants, I was confronted, almost daily, with the paradox of joy and sorrow. I regularly witnessed celebration, laughter and joy emanating from people whose lives had been turned upside down. I wrote that line in Becoming Neighbours out of what I had seen and heard. I knew, as an observer, that it was true, but I’m not sure that I had really experienced it.
In this season, I’ve been living mainly in the last part of that sentence, thinking, at times, that joy might be impossible. When it gets dark, I know logically that I have experienced joy before, but I cannot relate to the feeling and I struggle to imagine it returning…ever.
But, today, if you were on Napier Street just before noon, you would have seen me running down the street in a bright blue rain jacket, dodging puddles while dribbling a basketball. Andrew followed behind me, probably somewhat surprised to see this new side of me, the almost-thirty-year-old-woman with all the bouncing enthusiasm of a seven year old boy. And if that's not joy, I’m not sure what is.
This morning Andrew and I celebrated Orthodox Saint Nicholas Day, having been unprepared for the unorthodox one on December 6th. (One perk of being newly married is you get to make your own traditions!) We gave each other stockings filled with small gifts. Inside mine was a basketball pump, with its accompanying basketball stashed in the closet. After seeing a new outdoor court go in at the elementary school down the street, and reminiscing about my glory days in high school, I had mentioned to Andrew that I’d like to have a basketball.
So there we were this morning, air-balling and pretend alley-ooping our way around the court. I stayed a while longer on my own and a passerby hollered “Who’s winning?” “Me, myself, and I!” I called back.
The invitation I sense, in a season when joy is scarce, is to simply be open to it when it comes. And then to call it what it is.
Anticipate joy.
(I’m expecting, once again, that I’ll need to read this later and trusting that there will be grace to live by these words.)
