Some thoughts on joy: Gaudete Advent

It is the "Joy Week" of Advent.  Gaudete Sunday was last Sunday.
Gaudete basically means rejoice, and so in the midst of darkness and deep reflection is joy. 
It sounds easy and light hearted, but for me, it isn't so.

For me, and I don't know about you, joy is a vulnerable experience.

I can do happiness.  I can laugh, tell a good joke, and be boisterious.  Sometimes I am even mistaken for an extrovert I can be so happy at a party.  Happiness, for me, often involves my control: witty banter, games, laughter, and stepping into a way of being that is fun.

But joy is different.
Joy, for me, is something deeper. Joy, it seems is something I have less control over.

Today, Junia's school hosted a fancy lunch.  I sat with her, ate her cafeteria food with her and then afterwards watched her winter music show.  I gazed at her, singing her heart out, and I felt tears well up in me.  I wasn't sad.  I was joyful.  Joyful that in a room full of families and kids, that my kid over there on the top row with braids and a plaid dress loved me and I loved her.  That we have each other. I teared up with joy. 

I am not in control of any of that.  She is gift.  Junia 9 years old, as she is today is gift.

Joy, for me, is closer to contentment and beloveness than happiness.  Sean, and my marriage, give me great joy.  Growing food that we eat give me great joy.  Making a meal that someone loves gives me great joy. All of these are things I put my heart into.
They are also things that are very vulnerable to me.

Sean could hurt me, condemning my garden would hurt me, refusing to try a meal I put my heart into would hurt me...If Junia hadn't smiled at me while i watched her concert t would have hurt.

I fear being caught being joyful about something stupid.  I have this giant wound, somewhere in my past, for being too selfish, too emotional, too much of a feeler.  Joy is a deep deep feeling and being caught having that feeling means someone could take it away, mock it, or push deeper into that wound.

I need to work on that, to do some healing in that wound.

I think that joy is held in relationship to pain and loss.

Knowing that my children will grow up, that either Sean or I will die first, that winter is coming..reminding ourselves that all of life is liminial welcomes the possibility of what joy is right NOW.  I could sentimentalize it or try to remember it, but for me, I want to savor the right now. 

There is loss and difficulty on the horizon behind me and probably in front of me and knowing that can either force me to build up my defenses or let myself engage in the honest intimacy that is living...and doing it with some joy.