How Will We Choose Joy?

By Traci Hubbard

This past Friday, I was in the Orchard Park Mall in Kelowna and saw a sign that read, “No Talkie until Coffee.”  I laughed and immediately thought this is something my daughter Sarah would say. So, why don’t we begin this reflection with the confession that most of us wake up somewhere on the spectrum between “Good Morning Sweet Life” and “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee.”

A few years ago, my best friend and her husband purchased a piece of furniture from IKEA. She shared, the box said, “Assembly required.” Her husband said, “I can do this with my eyes closed.” She knew that “assembly required” meant her marriage was about to be tested.

Tannis went on to share that three hours in, they had leftover screws, missing pieces, and she remembers one of them saying, “I think we did step 12 before step 4.”

She said, “Trey, you know me and John, and that was not a happy moment. But joy? Joy is realizing halfway through the chaos, here we are, after all these years and tears, and we’re still together, still laughing. And this bookshelf doesn’t get the final word. But let’s still open the wine, it couldn’t hurt.”

Choosing joy does not gloss over the mess. Choosing joy declares that the mess, the pain, is not the end of the story. If joy were automatic, we wouldn’t need books or sermons encouraging us to choose its built-in grace and mercy. We would just wake up joyful and full like our phones after a full night on the charger.

There are some mornings when we wake up more like our phones at 2% battery. Our feet haven’t touched the floor and we are already tired. Already annoyed that the dog wakes up wagging her tail and licking our faces with unbridled joy. I think Ruby knows I have bones inside of me and she want one. And yet, Scripture and the energy of the Spirit keep reminding us about joy, in fact, both insist on joy not being a suggestion for us to consider, but a choice we need to make so we can be more, do more, and experience more than a life of just making it through. That’s swamp spirituality.

Choosing the joy of Christ empowers us to drain the swamp as we go, and refill it with living water.

Joy is not denial. James writes, “Consider it all joy… whenever you face trials of many kinds.” James does not say, “Pretend your trials aren’t real.” He doesn’t say, “Smile more.” He doesn’t say, “At least it could be worse.” James says, the Spirit whispers, consider it all joy. In other words, we are being encouraged to stop, take a pregnant pause, reframe, and choose joy.

Joy in the Hebrew and Christian stories in the Bible is not denial of what is, it is spiritual quantum living, providing meaning. The lens of joy changes our interior lens in how we are observing and interpreting reality and then inviting joy to help apply its wisdom and joy filled strength into our thoughts and practices. Choosing to embody joy empowers us to look hardship square in the eye of its storm and say, “Yes…oh yes this is the hardest thing ever but this present moment of you (whatever your storm or pain may be), this is not forever, so you do not get the final word.”

When I go to Costco, I go with a mission. List in hand. Get in. Get out. Stay patient. Be kind.  But I forgot that Costco does not have an express lane. And the lady in the cart ahead of me with ten items had family members flying in and out of her cart dumping more things until they had to get a second cart, which they also filled. One of the people turned out to be her sister who just flew in from Boston and a family reunion ensued.  Someone pulled out coupons which proved to be outdated but a fight over each one was taken on in full American Yankee style. The people in the line to my left began videoing the scene.

I felt like I was secretly being filmed by that show Candid Camera. I noticed I was grinding my teeth, silently judging the woman I could see eating four Costco hotdogs spilling mustard and onions all over her table, and I could feel my joy beginning to leak out with every coupon Boston tried to get approved. I turned around, looking for hidden cameras and noticed an older man in line behind me. He looked at me and began laughing and said, “Well, I guess if we’re going to wait, we might as well enjoy each other.” My first thought was he was going to hand me a pamphlet from his denomination, and then I reminded myself to be kind.

Seconds later, the man was chatting with everyone. Joking. Laughing. He was a delight. Still, the Bostonian was on a mission, so for fifteen more minutes, nothing changed—except the atmosphere. And then the moment gave me a gift of a reminder: Joy never requires better, easy, or happy circumstances. Joy is always available to choose – it is a life-giving interior posture. I know this to be true.

I also know something else that is true, coupons do not get us a discount on joy, because joy cannot be bought, only freely chosen. Our question is, “What is the source of our joy?” Oops, wrong question. “Who is the source of our joy?” Because if we believe we alone are the source, we are in canoes without paddles.  Jesus says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

Folks, it is very easy to read this verse incorrectly.  So, let’s read it again: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that (my joy will make) your joy complete.” Jesus does not say your joy makes you complete. He says my joy. Joy is not something we manufacture. It’s something we receive when we stop pushing against what is and take time to be in the presence – the energy – the joy of Christ that is within us and all around us, no matter what is happening.

When I returned home from Texas after my mother’s death – it was April 2021 and the world was in Covid lock-down. I walked into my home with my mother’s ashes in my arms. My girls had been there – just left in fact. Candles were lit…music was on. Fresh roses were on my kitchen island, and my refrigerator was stocked with my favorite foods, and meals. A card read, “Mama, we love you.” While I held my mother’s ashes, exhausted, spiritually drained, emotionally broken, physically sore, I felt a rising – like a tide moving – shifting inside me. I walked over to my mantel and placed mom’s ashes down and immediately fell to my knees. Hot silent tears streaming down my face and neck…and then the Spirit whispered, “BREATHE Traci…breathe me in.” I remember exhaling all I had…and then inhaling deeply as I rose to my feet and chose joy. I breathed in joy – I exhaled joy. The hardest most gut-wrenching reality was all around me and yet I experienced the presence of Jesus – the Spirit of Love - a peace and strength that has no human definition. Paul tells us in his letter to the church in Philippi that ‘for the joy set before him”, Jesus walked towards his execution and swallowed it whole because he loved so very unselfishly, so very completely.’ In those moments, I believe, Jesus was resurrected in his surrendering to LOVE. In the moment I was on my knees and then choosing to see and embody the joy of being my mother’s daughter, my daughter’s mother, and a daughter of the Holy, I experienced resurrection into a new way of being inside of me and which empowered a new way of living into and out of my resurrection in my relationships and work.

Friends, this experience had nothing to do with trying to be strong or white fisting my way through grief. We can never produce joy by trying harder. We experience and embody joy by remembering whom we are rooted in—like branches that stop striving and start abiding. My mother buried her sons and taught me how to continue living by choosing joy.

Joy is a practice. It is not a personality trait. Paul wrote his letter to the church in Philippi from prison, almost completely blind, and freezing in his Roman cell. Listen to his connection with the Sacred as he writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice.” I believe the Spirit has Paul repeat his encouragement because She knows we are quick to forget that the DNA of holy Joy is weaved into our DNA. Friends, we are children of Living Water, children of the Light of abundant hope, peace, joy, and love.  When we forget who we are, and Who holds us, we lose our grounding, allowing our pain, our fear, and our anxiety to drown out the music of the Spirit.

And look folks, Paul goes even further and shows us how to put joy into practice. He writes, “Whatever is true, honorable, just, pure… think about these things” Practicing joy is like rain falling into our flowers on our decks, making them bloom and grow in beauty and fragrance. Joy grows where our attention goes. When we rehearse our fears, we strengthen our anxiety. When we rehearse, practice, drinking from the well of Living Water, we strengthen our joy.

We are free to choose joy inside of and despite of any circumstance, no matter how painful. Choosing to live in the joy of Jesus creates space for the peace of Holy LOVE to abide in us.  This is what Paul means when he says, ‘When you choose joy by practicing the ways that nurture joy, the peace of God… will guard your hearts and your minds.’ Joy does not just become a guardrail when life tries to knock us off the road. Joy becomes our road, our strong and soft place to land, to ground ourselves, wherever we are.

Friends, the essence of joy Is strength. When the people of Israel wept over their failures, Nehemiah told them, “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Joy is not weakness. Joy is spiritual resistance to surrendering to discouragement, despair, and disconnection to our source of strong formidable laughter. Joy gives us the strength to forgive. The strength to endure. And the strength to keep showing up when life is heavy.

Choosing joy is a practice and it will not always feel natural. I will tell you from personal experience that it can feel supernatural. Sometimes choosing joy feels half-hearted. Sometimes it feels like laughing through tears. Sometimes it feels like whispering hope when shouting despair would be easier.

But joy reminds us that the Spirit is still at work. Love always wins. And the present moment is not the end of the story. Folks, we can completely miss two storms that are guaranteed: pay someone to assemble our Ikea purchases and we must accept the reality that the lines in Costco are not going to grow shorter. Just sayin’. As we leave here today may we choose joy, not because life is easy, but because the Holy is faithful. May we walk in Advent echoing Mary saying my soul magnifies the Lord. May it be so, amen.