Peals of laughter and a chorus of squeals drifted from the living room into the kitchen, where I stood with my hands in a sink full of dirty dishes. Heaviness rested on my chest like an x-ray apron as I methodically rinsed each plate and bent to place it in the dishwasher. Even the most mundane chores felt laborious when grief draped the house like an impenetrable fog.
“How is he even able to laugh? How can he be having fun?” I wondered as I leaned against the doorframe, damp dishtowel in my hands, and watched my husband roughhouse with our two young boys. They were engaged in an epic tickle war, and all three of them screamed with laughter until they fell, spent, onto the carpet in a heap.
My husband’s father was dying of lung cancer, yet in the midst of fear and grief, Brad managed to embrace joy. I didn’t understand how such joy was possible. I couldn’t escape the darkness of grief that enveloped me.
Weeks later, long after the memorial service had passed, I asked my husband how he’d been able to summon such joy during such an awful time. His answer surprised me. Sometimes he’d faked it, he admitted, going through the motions for the kids’ sake. But other times the tickling and giggling had somehow birthed a genuine joy – a respite from the pervasive grief. Playing with the kids had wedged open a crack. And just for a moment, a shaft of light had sliced through the darkness.
“At its core, joy emanates from the abiding sense of God’s fierce love for us,” Margaret Feinberg writes in her latest book, Fight Back With Joy
Margaret did not write these words flippantly. She wrote them from the heart in the midst of her own suffering as she walked through breast cancer, surgery and chemotherapy. Margaret Feinberg doesn’t write about fighting for joy in the abstract. She writes it real, because she lived it, is living it.
It’s not always easy to remember that God is with us in these difficult times. Often we are so consumed by our own devastation that we forget God is right there with us, even in the most awful moments. These unexpected flashes of joy, these moments when we allow ourselves to succumb to frivolity and silliness are a reminder that God is present, shining his love and compassion upon us.
I refused to allow myself joy during that terribly difficult time because I felt guilty, as if my happiness would disrespect or perhaps even betray my father-in-law.
But observing Brad and my kids laugh helped me understand that joy can accompany grief. These two powerful emotions needn’t be kept separate, but instead can flow seamlessly, one into the other.
I see now that God’s presence is often experienced more vividly and palpably in these moments when heaven and earth meld. I believe when we feel joy, even as the weight of grief hangs heavy, we experience the nearness of a God who is with us wherever we go.
This post is part of Margaret Feinberg’s Blog Party for her brand-new book and Bible study, Fight Back With Joy. To join the celebration (and learn more), click here. To read more about the book or to purchase a copy, click here.
To hear more about the book from Margaret herself, watch this short video trailer for Fight Back with Joy: {readers who are reading this post in email, click here and scroll down to the bottom of the blog post to watch the video.}:
Fight Back With Joy 6-Session DVD Bible Study Promo Video from Margaret Feinberg on Vimeo.
