The church calendar guides us through the season of Advent by designating a theme for each week. This week’s theme is “Rejoice” or “Joy”. Thus, I’ve been spending time with Joy this week, looking for it, pondering how it shows up, and asking myself how I can cultivate more of it.
I do find it interesting, and also entertaining, that the theme of “Joy” comes to us in the week right before the Christmas celebration.
As a mother, aka curator and creator of all things celebratory in our family, the week before Christmas often feels too full of everything to have room for joy. I remember when my offspring were in elementary and middle school, and how very difficult these last few days before Christmas break felt. Routines get messed up. Everyone is tired from well-gatherings and events. Venturing into the outside world even for routine grocery shopping is a challenge as traffic feels like permanent rush-hour, and every store feels populated past its recommended limit.
This specific week in 2025 has also been a heartbreaking in the world at large. Racism and violence have broken our hearts yet again.
This is why Joy matters.
Advent gives us an annual opportunity to journey with darkness and uncertainty, with waiting for something we long for but aren’t sure how it will show up. We’re just a few days away from the winter solstice here in the northern hemisphere, so we’re in the darkest of dark in the cycle of the year.
This is when we most need to remember Joy.
My experience with Joy is that I tend to disregard its twinkles and glimmers. I want it to show up in big ways. I want to be overwhelmed with Joy so that grief and fear and all those other uncomfortable feelings get swept away.
This week, I’ve been sensing the invitation to notice where Joy co-exists with the more difficult emotions. I don’t mind admitting that it’s hard some days. Even just everyday weariness seems to override Joy.
But I’ve been trying to pay attention, to really notice when Joy shows up … and she has. She whispers through a pastel sunrise, winks through the grand-dog’s ridiculous drama over a car on the street, twinkles through a forgotten treasure I find in the storage room while cleaning up the mess from a broken water line. They’re not huge encounters, and they’d be so easy to miss if I weren’t watching for them.
And isn’t that the essence of waiting? When we’re consciously waiting, we have to be alert for the signals of arrival.
I listened to a podcast this week in which SC Perot, author of Styles of Joy: A Feel-Good Framework for Rediscovering Joy, shared her experience with asking people, often strangers on airplanes and in coffee shops, “What brings you joy?” She noticed that a lot of people don’t have a ready answer. She encouraged podcast listeners to spend time with that question, and actually write down their answers.
This paying attention to what lights us up serves two purposes. First, it makes us more likely to notice Joy when it sparkles at us from within more difficult emotions. Secondly, it gives us concrete ideas for those moments in which we want to be deliberate about cultivating more of its presence.
About a month ago, I made plans to visit a friend who has an 18-month-old daughter. I’ve been friends with Mom for over a decade, and thus, have had the delight of being part of the little one’s life from the beginning. However, it’s been at least 8 months since I’ve visited these two, and I was concerned that the young one might not remember me. When the morning of the visit arrived, I actually wasn’t sure I wanted to go. I felt tired, emotionally drained, and just didn’t want to leave the house. And also … I knew that seeing my two friends always brings me joy. I acknowledged my own weariness, and gave myself permission to show up for this visit as a tired person who loves these two.
No sooner had I sat down on the couch to chat with Mom-friend, than the little one climbed up beside me, and crawled right into my lap as if she’d seen me just the day before. My heart overflowed. In that moment, the challenges of the past few days weren’t nearly so big. It was a Big Joy moment that couldn’t have occurred had I not been willing to a) choose joy and b) been willing to recognize little glimmers as they’ve appeared along the way.
So over the next few days, as you meet whatever your life is offering you right now, I invite you to consider what brings you joy. If you can, start making a list, and allow yourself to keep adding to it. I promise that as you begin to keep company with this question, the responses will multiply.
May Joy surprise you as we continue waiting for the Light.
Leave a Reply