Endless Joy

The minister’s wife from the church my wife and I attended one year while going to college was a joy addict. By that I mean that she emphasized joy all the time. Her gifts featured the word joy. Her correspondence addressed the topic. Her conversation seemed always to include some idea or experience concerning her take on joy. Joy seemed to be in her every thought.

My wife loved it and took up the theme for herself. It suited her perfectly: the positive, energetic, loving Myrna. She embodied joy; still does! To this day any card she sends to the minister’s home shows up announcing JOY. The word also became for Myrna an emphasis in gifts to others, letters to anyone, even messages on her answering machine, a usage that has persisted for decades. With both women, the minister’s wife and mine (now ex-), you can assume they are talking about joy, about endless joy, and that they are living endlessly joyful.

The lovely three-letter word almost requires a smile to pronounce it. Something about the shape of the lips to make the initial sound, to form the “o,” and to end with the “e” just looks joyful, especially if one’s eyes twinkle at the same time as the utterance. JOY, like in the Noel “While by their sheep” that says of the shepherds in Luke’s nativity story, “How great their joy!” and then in an ascending scale and increasing volume repeats it three times: “Joy, joy, joy.” Just can’t get enough of this word or of the feeling it represents. While I’ve never tended sheep on a winter’s night or encountered a troop of angels who were singing “Glory to God in the highest,” I do know something of the emotion, and in my imagination it far surpasses the feelings experienced while, say, opening a surprise package from under the Christmas tree or a small box that proffers an engagement ring or even the realization that one didn’t die from the last dread disease! Joy is just plain good in my book.

I like Joy’s feeling of excitement, elevated heart rate, infectious smiles, sense of well being, and its general love of life. I hope to experience it endlessly although I may not quite have enough strength for that. Oh, do I need to define my words? I don’t believe so, but I am aware that my life has provided many, many joyful occasions. This new year I celebrate these:

Being in high school junior and senior plays,
Singing a solo atop the singing Christmas tree,
Going to college,
Being married to Myrna,
Rearing children in our home,
Going on choir tour,
Conducting my own choirs,
Directing a musical play,
Writing curriculum resources,
Having intense relationships with several men,
Showing and selling quite a few of my paintings,
Completing thirty years of ministry in religious education and music,
Completing fifteen years of giving massage therapy to people in pain,
Reading hundreds of books as well as writing several myself, and
Telling my story to grandkids and sages.

My life has provided almost endless joy when I take time to think about it. May these experiences continue giving me more such emotional riches like the Noel’s, “Joy, joy, joy” in ascending, crescendoing repetition.