The Gift of Joy

Faith, hope, joy, love: these are represented by each candle in the Advent wreath. You’d think that the pink candle representing joy, Gaudete Sunday, would come on the last Sunday of Advent, just before Christmas. Instead, it’s at the end of the middle, the third Sunday.

Joy is like that. Joy doesn’t come as you might expect it would.

Reflecting on joy, what everyone seems to want and few seem to get, I’m sharing lines from my book, It’s Good to Be Here. (Why reinvent the wheel?)

Joy — Why Are You so Happy?

“I just have to tell you — you have the most beautiful smile that I have ever seen,” the usherette in the theater lobby told me. I smiled all the more because it was far from the first time that someone had so complimented my smile, and I think it’s rather funny. You see, I do not have a physically beautiful smile at all. It’s a bit askew and shows a lot of upper gum, as well as an overbite and two overlapping teeth. The funny part is that, despite these marks of ugliness, there seems to be a whole lot of objective beauty in my smile, as so many different people have pointed it out. So . . . what makes it beautiful?

Joy makes it beautiful. The fact that I am crumpled up in a wheelchair, head flopped over, and genuinely smiling with an obvious joy takes some people’s breath away…. Why is happiness such an unexpected thing to find in me that people consider it so remarkable? …

You see, we fallible human beings think that happiness comes through things, that it is attached to stuff like health, wealth, good looks, or fame. We think those things are what bring happiness, but there are plenty of people who are healthy, wealthy, good-looking, famous — and miserable. Although they may experience fleeting feelings of happiness, they don’t know real, deep, abiding happiness (which I like to call joy to distinguish from the mere feeling, and because “happy” used to strike me as a sappy-sounding word). Many “well-off” people live unhappy lives of meaninglessness, addiction, anger, and loneliness because real happiness, joy, doesn’t come as an attachment.

Real happiness has no strings attached. Joy is free. It comes freely, like a true gift.

We all thirst for joy as if we were specifically designed for it. That’s because we are. We are, each and every one of us, created to be joyful. I believe that our Creator is loving, is Love itself, and joy is freely given to everyone through His love, like rain pouring down upon us. But we can only receive joy if our hearts, like bowls, are open, upturned, like a beggar’s. Like beggars, we must know that we are dependent upon God who is the center and source of the truly and deeply good things of life. In that state, which is humble gratitude, our little bowls fill up and overflow, and we can drink our fill of joy. If, however, we are turned in upon ourselves, self-centered, upside down, then we are closed off from the reception of joy, and, though we may get wet, we will never be filled, never be satisfied.

Joy, then, which is what I believe people see in me, is not contingent upon a desirable body or prestige. That is why someone like me — someone crumpled up in a wheelchair, severely dependent and limited in my abilities, choices, and lifestyle — can be joyful. I don’t go out and look for joy (which is good because I don’t get out much, and when I do it’s not very far), and I also don’t wait for joy to fall big and obvious into my lap. To some, the joy of living fully means experiencing trips to exotic locales, romantic hookups, physical thrills, luxuries, or lauded accomplishments. But again, this is the false concept that joy, that fullness of life, comes through things.

It doesn’t. Real happiness is free and unconditional — necessarily so in order to be abiding joy. Otherwise it could be lost. When all things are gone — physical abilities, money, work, home, friends, small pleasures, even loved ones and mental abilities — true joy remains. This is because true joy is a oneness with life itself, with ultimate reality — with God. It is how I have come to think of righteousness. It’s not about having the right answers, proper formulas, or desired things. Righteousness is holiness; it’s being locked into the good, the true, and the beautiful. It’s having a key of love and gratitude that fits into paradise.

Joy is Christ.

Joy is the wonder of letting God love you, through everything, and through the absence of things.

With the Lord as our loving stronghold, of what shall we be afraid?[1]

This surrendering of fear is how we experience true joy, true peace. While I have fears and sorrows, angst and rage, disappointments and frustrations, just like all of us do because we are human, these are feelings that wash over on the surface, like clouds across the sky. Clouds can certainly change the weather and bring terrible storms, but they can never remove the sky. Knowing this truth is the beginning of joy, though not its fulfillment. For now, I see only dimly, know only in part.[2] My begging bowl is full and overflowing but will remain finite, limited, until I am taken up fully into the Infinite Source, eternally submerged in the eternal embrace of joy, which is God’s pure and limitless love.[3]

Reflection

            As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, let’s make sure that our hearts, our little begging bowls, are turned right side up. Then, by God’s grace, we may truly drink a cup of good cheer.

© 2023 Christina Chase

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[1] See Psalms 27:1.

[2] See 1 Corinthians 13:12.

[3] Chase, Christina. It’s Good To Be Here: A Disabled Woman’s Reflections on God in the Flesh and the Sacred Wonder of Being Human | Sophia Institute Press 2019.

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Feature Photo by Zoya Loonohod on Unsplash