Immutable Joy

For years, I thought I understood joy. I saw it as universal, an arbitrary gift given to each person in equal measure. I saw it as a passive entity – something you receive, not something you choose.

But I was wrong.

I didn’t truly understand joy until I understood suffering.

Now, that isn’t to say the two things are mutually inclusive. They can, in fact, exist in isolation. The suggestion that joy and suffering are somehow co-dependent is a hackneyed and vastly inaccurate way of thinking about pain.

To quote John Green from his mega-bestseller, A Fault in Our Stars:

“Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy? — This is an old argument in the field of Thinking About Suffering, and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries, but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.”

Having watched helplessly as my wife suffered and died from cancer, I could not agree more. Suffering doesn’t fortify our capacity for joy. Chocolate tastes better than broccoli. It’s really that simple.

Suffering doesn’t deepen the depths of joy and joy can’t stop the rain from falling.

But here’s the crux, the peculiar paradigm that Green’s protagonist didn’t discuss:

There exists such a thing as being “joyous IN suffering.” Notice it isn’t “joy BECAUSE of suffering” or “joy AS A RESULT OF suffering,” but rather, it is choosing joy in the midst of the war-torn valley; it’s a deliberate, voluntary jubilance in spite of the trenches.

And that is precisely why I didn’t understand joy until I understood suffering. Not because of some trite cause-and-effect relationship, or the nauseatingly cliched notion that suffering amplifies our awareness of joy.

No. Exactly the opposite.

Joyous suffering is irrational. It doesn’t make sense. Broccoli and chocolate have no business on the same plate.

But it’s the only cure.

Joyous suffering is joy in its purest, most empiric form.

Don’t believe me? I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t seen it for myself. During the three-year battle Kailen and I waged against stage IV breast cancer, she completely renovated my understanding of joy.

The lessons are too numerous to count, but I’ve distilled them down to three:

1)  Joy, like healing, is a choice.

Though this is likely a controversial view, I willfully stand by it. I previously stated that I once saw joy as an arbitrary gift, and I actually still believe that. My error was in the belief that joy is passive. You see, it is a gift. But that’s the thing about gifts – you have to unwrap them. The act of unwrapping is a choice.

In my estimation, scripture validates this stance.

One of the most frequently-cited verses about joy and suffering comes from the first chapter of James:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” James 1:2

James urges us to “consider” our trials as pure joy. In other words, he’s telling us we have to make a choice.

2) Joy is a side effect of hope.

As we discussed in last week’s post (see The Icy Tower of Babel), helplessness is a side effect of suffering. By the same thread, joy is a side effect of hope.

For in the midst of great suffering and pain, and even in the face of a terminal diagnosis, it is hope that galvanizes our joy; it is our unconquerable hope in something greater, or more specifically, in someone greater, that ultimately convinces us to believe the utterly irrational.

It is hope that compels us to unwrap the gift, to add chocolate onto our plate of broccoli. And once again, scripture agrees:

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer.” Romans 12:12

To revise A Fault in Our Stars – “Without HOPE, how could we know joy?”

We couldn’t.

3) Joy transcends circumstance. 

This one’s easy.

I watched Kailen raise her hands in worship when she could barely stand, heard her sing when she could barely speak, laugh when she could barely breath, and dance with two broken hips.

Happiness is circumstantial. Joy isn’t.

It’s all or nothing. Binary. All the time or never at all. Silent or immutable.

As a new year begins, may your joy be immutable. May you choose it in spite of the trenches; may your hope be unconquerable and irrational; and may your joy transcend every painful circumstance you may be enduring.

“Be joyful ALWAYS!” 1 Thessalonians 5:16