Joydrops

January 2, 2024

Someone on a facebook group asked this question:

show me a photo where you’re experiencing nothing but joy…

nothing but joy in this moment.

to be clear…it wasn’t hard to find this moment…there just haven’t been many pure JOY filled moments.

the hard part since October 21, 2023 is the grief …

this is hard to admit – Aunt Beth wouldn’t want this for me, she wouldn’t want this for any of us that she loved…but this is where I am…and she would want honesty-

This picture-

this captured moment – where all of the pain and the loss and the gray and the heaviness – without question – were ABSENT-

without question.

I felt it then – the JOY –

a gift of quick respite from grief –

grief that is looming and heavy – grief that my heart is holding at bay because the thought of the work of facing it is breathtaking in the worst way

so I turn my focus everywhere else

but the JOY is so sparse when I live this way

and that was so loud when there was only one-

only one picture of pure joy –

it’s not that there isn’t joy…there are reasons for joy, they are there…I encourage others to look even for the smallest drop of joy…and I believe it’s possible-

it just hasn’t happened much-

I’ve been hunkered down at this grief address – I know I’m a visitor, but I am having a tough time getting packed up and moved out- moving is overwhelming and I don’t like it…

there are so many more weighty reminders of the grief…so many everyday…that my grief muscle is my most toned muscle ever…

every time the kids send me pics of the grands, my first thought is to text Aunt Beth. there are moments of color and I want to send her a pic of the sunset or sunrise but I can’t. there are questions about our family that I want to ask her about and I can’t. or a recipe. or advice or a song and. a scripture and another song…that’s just too many reps of grief… too many reminders…

and so a moment of pure JOY dropping into the heaviness of the grief brings light and color and a refilling of the air in my lungs.

my question…

will the moments of JOY ever outweigh the grief reminders…?