She was looking for silence, like one would their pulse upon being told of their own death. In a panic, beginning with the chest and moving to the wrists, searching for signs of life more devout than beads of sweat on a forehead, or movement of the hand that is raised to wipe it. Silence borrowed from pauses in speech and the unannounced touching of shoulders or elbows by hands that do not know to chime on contact with the other. She found chaos. I grieve on this day for all the things she’s not. I recount, revise, reanalyze, revisit, recall, replay, remember, and it’s hell. It’s sin.
A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago that we exist to be joyful. It is the first time in my entire life that anyone has ever said that to me. I know life is supposed to be hard because it has been. I know sadness, however long it lasts, is inevitable because I feel it still and frequently. I know that there are peaks and valleys and that both these things are subjective. But joy? Where is it promised that there will be joy? What amazed me more was that I could read it on him. Joy leaks out of more than just his smile; it is the attitude of his soul. It is the pigment of his candor. He lives joy and so deliberately does he speak it, even when it’s not being spoken. “It’s because of Jesus,” he said to me.
In the Bible there is great mention of good things. Not proof of our worth, but confirmation of His. The One who chose us (John 15:16).
All this time she thought joy a fickle schedule of man, when instead it might be that it is a feature of the divine. Real magic we can call down from the skies. It’s dangerous to say these things in the midst of a pandemic when so many suffer this new performance of life and living. But in John 15:11 Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete”.
She fell back in love with Jesus last year. So this year is for joy. Finding it. Claiming it. Bleeding it.
It’s what I want for her.
It’s what I wish for you.
The Loincloth Diaries 