Joy

Joy is such a funny, funny thing.

I've thought about it a lot here lately and the conclusion I've come to is this:

It is so very selfless.

As I sat at Jon's celebration of life yesterday (and yes, it was a celebration) and watched his mom and sister sing the words to Matt Redman's song "Never Once," raising their hands in true worship, and I thought to myself, "That is what true joy looks like."  That is what it looks like fall down on your knees and worship God, even in the midst of the greatest pain and loss of your life.  That is what it looks to offer a sacrifice of praise, to praise God when you least feel like it.  That is what joy looks like, dancing alongside grief.  That is what it means to make Jesus greater.  And that's what it looks like to choose joy. 

It would be an epic failure if I tried to capture all that went through my mind and my heart yesterday as I sat listening to the words spoken about Jonathan's life.  I went in just feeling so - so sorrowful, so sad.  I missed my friend terribly and I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through the next hours.  The tears just wouldn't seem to stop.  And seeing his body lying in that casket - I kept waiting to see his chest move or to see his eyes open. (I promise I'm not trying to be creepy)  I desperately wanted my friend back. 

But as the stories began unfolding and as the worship songs brought forth praise, a small part of me was being healed.  And I was humbled.  I count it nothing less than a privilege to have spent my Thursday evenings with Jon, taking up a spot on the couch in his little corner of the world, watching episodes of Big Bang and Wipeout, rehashing scenes from Lord of the Rings.  As I was at the visiting hours on Sunday afternoon, his mom nearly did me in when she pulled me in for a hug and said, "Courtney, you saw past his chair.  You saw past his chair.  And he loved you."  And when his brother-in-law said, "You know, Jon had a lot of friends who could say a lot of nice things about him and he had a lot of friends who loved him from a distance, but very few who entered into his world like you did."  It was too much.  I wanted my friend back more than I wanted to hear those words.

But leaving - leaving that celebration behind and leaving Jon behind, I realized the value of choosing joy in this moment.  If Tim and Twyla, Jesse and Kellye could choose joy, if they could choose to lift their hands in worship, if they could choose to smile and praise God, then surely I could do the same.  Because I am not without hope.  Jon was not without hope.  Yes, he spent most of his life in a wheelchair.  Yes, he had a terrible disease that robbed him of a lot of things the rest of the world said was necessary. Yes, he didn't like what that disease had done to him.  But he was not without hope.  He saw that disease as something not to be bitter about, but something to be grateful about because it was making him more like Christ.  I love how Anne Lamott talked about it in her book Traveling Mercies - she was talking about an interview with a man who had a terminal illness.  He was learning to savor life and instead of having a life-threatening disease, he had a disease-threatening life.  Jon had a disease-threatening kind of life.

That kind of joy isn't manufactured by the world.  It's not manufactured by a religious crutch or a warm fuzzy feeling from a so-so god.  You don't pull that kind of joy out of thin air, you don't conjure it up and you don't fabricate it.  It comes only from a God who said, "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."  Jon's joy is complete.  And never once did he walk alone.