Surprised by Joy*

--For J and the two Cs.

After some recent events, I’ve been taking sober stock of my life and my character, thinking about who I want to be on the other side of it all—about who I want to be becoming, through all of this and through everything else. Part of me has wondered if certain things in my life would have gone a lot differently if I had been less complicated, if I had had the kind of carefree happiness that’s endlessly delightful to be around. I’ve seen that wholesome innocence in others, and I understand its summery appeal. When I think about it, it sometimes breaks my heart a little that I couldn’t have been that girl.

But in the midst of wishing that I were different, I’ve realized that I was given a different gift, even if it was not one included on my original Christmas list. Others have received it in far greater quantity and with far more grace than I have—so much so that I’m almost ashamed to class my own experience with theirs. But I think that however infinitesimal its measure, and however awkwardly I've received it, I’ve been given the gift of suffering.

I don’t mean this sarcastically or self-pityingly, and I certainly don’t mean that I’m asking for more of it, or that I’m resigned to some sad life. On the contrary, in some contradictory way, recognizing what I’ve gone through as a gift imparts to me a sense of peace, and kindles a small, steady hope for my life, for my eternal life. What I’ve received is not the simple vivacity of an untroubled heart. It’s not the kind of courage that comes from never having known fear, but the kind that comes from having faced the worst of my fears, and knowing that I will never be overcome by them again. It is a depth of compassion, and it is an irrefutable knowledge of the character of God.

As I look at the people I really, really love, I know that much of what I love most about them, what they reflect of the Spirit of Christ to me, has been born through their pain. My friend who lost her mother to death and virtually lost the rest of her family, even her in-laws, in the weeks and months afterward. Other friends, deeply beloved to me, who suffered infertility, and for whom the angel has not yet shown up to announce some miraculous birth. My grandmother, who lived through the Depression and survived her husband by twelve years. My friend who watched the loving husband she had waited her whole life for as he suffered for months before dying. My friend who is afraid of the world every day, yet meets it with shining eyes. In their careworn faces, I see a gentleness, an unshakable forbearance, and a tempered and powerful joy. Theirs is the spirit that takes my hands, looks me in the eyes, and says, “This too shall pass” with the serene authority of absolute faith.

And I want that; I want the grace to meet everything life throws at me with that kind of faith—because even the most carefree among us, I think, eventually meet some kind of bewildering pain, from which we cannot protect them. Because then I can recognize the incandescence of another person’s choice to bless the name of the Lord while wearing sackcloth and ashes. Because this is what the world needs, what this generation is crying out for—for a faith that can answer the suffering of our age.

Left to my own devices, I might have taken my chances with innocence anyway, but it would have meant choosing to be less than I am, less than what these friends are are, less than what He apparently wants me to be. My friends grow more luminous with every passing day; they embrace joy; they hold all things lightly except His hand. They are becoming what they will be in the resurrection—they are donning their glorified selves already. They are the fellowship that has shared in His suffering; they are the ministers of the kingdom of God. Make me like them, O Lord.

*apologies to C.S. Lewis