Joy ~ The Third Week of Advent

Joy is not my overriding emotion these days. It is the third week of Advent, but if I am being honest with myself, and if I am to write a few words on the topic of joy, I must state from the beginning that joy is not the emotion that I am feeling. In fact, I find myself asking, “Just what is joy?” “Where does it come from?” “Is it an emotion?” “Why joy?” “Is it just some other response that I am to have because after all it is Christmas, and aren’t I expected to feel joy?”

I’ll be honest, I’m feeling a lot of sadness this year. Sadness seems to be more present in my being than joy.

I’m in a place of grief. Grief that I haven’t adequately addressed. In many ways, I feel as if I have been in a state of grief for the entire year of 2019 as I watched my youngest sister Suzanne’s health decline until her death at the end of September. Even though we were separated by great distance, she was in California and I was in Colorado, we kept in touch nearly on a daily basis through phone calls and texts. It was in that contact that I took comfort because she was still with us, and I held out hope that she would get well. When the word came that she had been admitted to hospice and that there was no longer anything that could be done for her, I honestly thought my grief would knock me to ground. How would I face losing my baby sister? I was twelve when she was born. She had always seemed almost more like my child than my sister, and yet over the years we had formed a very solid sister bond that I think helped both of us navigate difficult days and relationships.

I told myself that I should steel myself for the inevitable. She would not last long. She lasted a week. In that week, I could relate so much with Frederick Buechner’s words in The Eyes of The Heart when he wrote of the days before his brother’s death when the inevitability of his impending death was “was too harrowing to think about.”

Yes, such thoughts were harrowing to me. And so, even in those last days and moments, I tried to be there for her by sending flowers to cheer her soul and speaking a word or two of comfort to her through her children who were by her side. Thankfully, I was even able to FaceTime with her just before she passed away and she fluttered her eyes open for me in recognition. I thought my heart would split wide open at the moment because I knew that would be the very last time I would ever see her beautiful brown eyes.

Unfortunately, life did not stop being complicated just because I was feeling sad and wanted to just take some time off to grieve. And so, I have kept on moving and doing.

Meanwhile, the other slow decline of heath that has been going on in my immediate family during the last year has speeded up. About a month after my sister’s death, my mother was admitted to hospice care. At 103 she is failing. As if that were not enough to deal with emotionally, I am also dealing with very complex family dynamics regarding my mother’s care. This too has been an ongoing problem for the past several years.

It all has taken a toll on my life. How is one to find joy in such times?

Today, just days before Christmas, I’m just very sad, and quite frankly, I don’t even feel like celebrating Christmas at all. "Can we just skip Christmas?" I want to ask. Actually, I think I voiced those words out loud to my daughters. “Let’s just not do Christmas this year. Let’s skip it.”

Yet, even though I recognize the need I have to grieve well, and even as I want to skip Christmas, I also find that I am purposefully holding space in my heart for joy.

In doing this, I am learning that at such times, holding space for joy means that one must fill up that place where joy may not yet be present by holding on to hope that joy will again be felt.

Yes, it through hope, I have learned, that I’m holding space for joy.

Just creating this table helped me begin to walk into that place where joy comes from because as I placed items upon the table, I began to realize that the item selection seemed to give expression to an expectation that joy would visit my heart even as it seemed bound up in sadness.

Joy is an expectation that we feel because we have hope.

Christmas is about hope, and it is also about joy, not the joy that the world expects, but the joy that is spoken about by Habakkuk when he realized that joy would not come from the things of this earth.

In fact, he realized that even if he had no figs, no olive oil, no flocks, and no herds, he would rejoice in the Lord. He said despite the expected coming of hard times, despite the possibility of being stripped of everything, even the possibility of not having food to eat, he would “rejoice in the Lord.” Why? Because he knew the source of joy. He knew that joy would never come from the things of this world. Where did he find joy? He said, “I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”

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Many years ago during a time of loss and uncertainty, I purchased a wall plaque with the scripture from Psalm 30:5 written on it. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. I hung on to those words with hope when I was not feeling any joy at all. And, the promise was true. I again found and felt great joy.

After my daughter died nearly ten years ago, I again looked to those words from the Psalms with great hope, knowing the words were true, even if my heart was not feeling them.

I wish I could explain the peace and joy that came to me in some of my darkest hours, but I cannot. This sense of joy and the peace I felt were supernatural. They could not be explained. They were a work of Holy Spirit ministering in me.

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I’m finding that joy and hope are more linked than I had realized before this year. I’ve learned this truth as I’ve reflected on the space I created in my home that reflects joy to me whenever I look at it.

The plants on my table I am dubbing “My Joy Table” mostly consist of plants that must live in the dark for a time before they will bloom. The one amaryllis has lived in the dark cool place of my basement closet since last Christmas. I’m not sure if the bulb will bloom this year now that it is again in the light, and now that it is receiving water, but I have hope. I tell myself that this bulb produced leaves and buds and flowers last year, surely it will do so again this year. I know the rules of growing such things. I’ve followed them. This bulb should produce a flower. I have hope based on what I know about the plant, but then again, maybe it won’t bloom this year. Maybe this year is not its year to break forth and bring beauty to those who look at her. Maybe she just wants to be quiet this year. That is ok. Some years we just don’t feel like blooming, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have hope, and that doesn’t mean that our days of giving and receiving joy are over, it just means that we are in a place where we have not been in years past.

We should not place too much pressure on ourselves when we are feeling grief. We must not try to conjure up joy. Our feelings are legitimate, and we must honor their true nature. If we are sad, we are sad. It does not mean that we don’t feel a sense of joy that is yet to come, or even that deep in our hearts we feel joy that cannot give way to the expression that others might expect from us.

And so, my joy table has an amaryllis bulb that does not appear to be on the path producing blooms this year. I’m accepting this bulb for being where she is. Blooming is up to her, not me. As a back-up, I bought a new bulb because quite honestly, I needed to have a blooming amaryllis in my house.

My sis Suzanne would send a beautiful a pot of blooming amaryllis’ to our Mother nearly every year. Each year my mother would tend to the bulbs, store them in a closet after they were done blooming, and then these bulbs would be recused from the dark closet and brought into the light and would produce beautiful blooms year after year.

Last year, I asked Mother if she had gotten her amaryllis out of the closet and if they were blooming yet. She didn’t know what I was talking about. She didn’t know what an amaryllis was. She told my sister Suzanne that she didn’t remember her ever sending her those plants. She said she’d never seen an amaryllis. She asked what they looked like and claimed she’d never owned one. Suzanne was hurt, but soon, she too realized that Mother was slipping away from us in her mind and it was not because she didn’t appreciate the beautiful gifts Suzanne had sent her. Little did I know then, while Suzanne and I discussed that Mother no longer recognized the names of the plants she always grew or remembered that she grew them, that by the next Christmas Suzanne would be gone from our midst, and I would be grieving over her death that still seems so unreal to me. And, my mother’s mind is also steadily slipping away from her too as her body continues to weaken and fail.

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In times of loss and change, when all that has always been a part of our lives begin to slip away, how are we to find joy? We are not all prophets like Habakkuk. We are just everyday people trying to get through difficult seasons in our lives during a season that is filled with many demands and expectations. Are we to light the Joy candle on the third candle of Advent and just gimly acknowledge that this word joy just does not apply to our lives this year? Are we supposed to just move through the season and hope that things improve so that next year we will feel joyful? If joy is an emotion, then I think many of us are left wondering how we manufacture such an emotion when we believe we have little in our lives that bring joy.

It is in these seasons when joy is not present because of our circumstance that I think that we finally learn that joy is produced by a work of the Holy Spirit. For that reason, I have white doves on the table to represent both the Holy Spirit and to represent the peace that comes from above.

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Again, without even realizing it, I realized after I added a small figurine of Tiny Tim and his father Bob Cratchit to my table that their presence represent the joy that came into their lives because Ebenezer Scrooge saw himself for the miserly person that he was before he was changed by the spirits who him visited on Christmas Eve. Their lives were transformed because Ebenezer Scrooge was transformed. That is a story of Christmas that we all love.

At a recent gathering that I attended that was held for mothers who have lost children, we were reminded that Ebenezer Scrooge may have been given the name Ebenezer because Dickens was making reference to Ebenezer, the stone set up by Samuel as memorial after the people had defeated the Philistines. Ebenezer means “stone of the help.” It was set up so that the people would remember that “till now the Lord has helped us.”

This recounting of the significance of the name Dickens gave Scrooge reminded me that the writing group that I have been working with this year has committed to remembering to mark those times when we too can say, “I will mark this time with an Ebenezer, a stone of help,” so that we can remember the faithfulness of the Lord.

This practice of marking those times when I realize that up to this point the Lord has helped me, and then marking that time with an Ebenezer has been an important practice for me. In those times, when I recognize a point in time when I could figuratively speaking erect an Ebenezer, I find myself saying, “The Lord has been with me up until this point, and look what has gone on in my life before this time. Surely, he will continue to be with me in the future. He will not abandon me here.”

Why would I doubt that my God won’t continue to be faithful?

Why would I doubt that my God will not use these days of sorrow to bring a harvest of joy?

Have I forgotten that he has promised us joy in the journey?

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Yet, honestly, sometimes I still realize when I look to the expectations and demands of the season I find joy seeping out of me and being replaced with anxiety and dread. I have my eyes on expectations and demands rather than on the message of the season.

I recently saw a meme that said, “Don’t try to fulfill all the hopes and dreams and expectations that others have of the season. Remember Jesus already did that when he came to earth as the word made flesh to dwell among us.”

This babe whose birth we celebrate on Christmas is Immanuel, God with us. The One who came to dwell among us. Jesus himself tells in John 15 that we are to live in His love just as He has lived in His Father’s love. Abide in Him. Abide in His love. And why did he tell us these things? Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

There is the source of joy. Do you see it? Don’t miss it.

Joy is found in abiding in the love of Jesus.

I pray I don’t lose sight of that truth this season. I pray that I don’t take my eyes off of this truth as I move through the demands of the season with a heart that is feeling the heaviness of grief. My Ebenezer table, my table of joy, is set up to remind me that indeed, “joy always comes in the morning,” and that I am to find my “joy in the God of my salvation” just as Habakkuk of old did.

The season alone does not bring us true and everlasting joy.

The trappings of the season do not bring us true and everlasting joy.

The festivities and family gatherings do not brings us true and everlasting joy.

That is not what this season is really about.

This is season is about the gift given us, the One we celebrate during this season.

He is the One who brings us joy.