Where’s the Joy? – Or, the Body, Joy, and Jesus

I went grocery shopping this afternoon. As I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a teenage couple walking together. The young man did a spontaneous cartwheel right there on the asphalt. His less than perfect landing made the couple break out in laughter and I thought:

Where’s the joy?

Immediately my mind answered the question: It’s been swallowed up by thirty years of $#!+.

Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not that I’m not happy. I am happy. I have a wonderful life, and I am incredibly grateful for it! I even have perspective on a lot of the garbage that’s happened to me and can see the value in having come through it–the ability it has given me to connect with so many people in their heartache, to see them with authentic love and compassion, to cry with them. That’s sacred space. It has also enabled me to create from a place of deep experience and vulnerability. In many ways, it has been an incredible gift. But gifts like this come at a cost. And I gotta be honest… some days just suck. Out of nowhere an old wound will trigger and I’ll be blind sighted. Life is like that—always giving us opportunities to go deeper into the pain and heal it at a new level.

Fortunately, I know how to regulate my nervous system, and I practice that. But I think my baseline for joy dropped drastically somewhere along the way. And happy became good enough. Content became good enough. Uneventful became fantastic. I mean, why would I need to feel joy? If you let yourself fill with joy, then you have so much farther to fall the next time trauma hits, right? And it has faithfully hit…in so many ways, and for such a long, long time.

Yesterday, I came across a song from my high school years that I used to absolutely love. I couldn’t help binge listening to it and realized how much of myself I’ve abandoned over the years. Teenage Jen spent every free minute singing, songwriting, and dancing because they were the purest, most authentic expressions of my soul. Eventually, singing and songwriting became therapy, and the only place I could still feel a modicum of the real me amidst the chaos. But dancing….

I completely stopped.

Trauma has a way of making you feel like it’s unsafe to be in your body, so I unconsciously shut it down, silenced the movement, the freedom, and with it, the joy.

Listening to this particular song took me back to the girl who felt the music so deeply that she couldn’t help but spin and leap and move and sing. And for a few hours, I reconnected with her.

I cried with her.

I danced with her.

I felt it all.

Sorrow. Love. Loss. Pain. Freedom. . . and Joy. Yes, joy.

And you know what?

She’s still in there. And so grateful that I acknowledged her in her language.

Yesterday, I reclaimed a forgotten piece of who I am. And that’s powerful.

And I did it through my body.

I have felt for a long time that the body has to be involved in our healing, or it’s not real healing at all. If you find yourself objecting to that statement for religious reasons, please understand that this is not meant to detract from the Atonement of Jesus Christ, but rather, it’s a reality that allows greater access to Him–because all of life is experienced in the body. How can I expect to powerfully connect with Jesus if my body is in fight-flight-freeze (aka: fear), or I’m habitually going through life in stress and self-protection mode? It’s worth considering. And I’m writing a book about it. I will have much more to say on the topic, starting with my next article on the love of God and the body.

In conclusion, I’d like to mention that in church last Sunday, I heard someone give a testimony about how you can feel joy and sorrow at the same time. Forgive my nuanced brain, but I disagree with that phrasing. It’s not possible to feel more than one emotion at a time. You can vacillate between emotions, even quickly, but not feel them at the same time, any more than you can feel fear and faith at the same time. We can live with both, learn to appreciate both, and give both a voice. But I think it’s important not to mash them together lest we think we’re doing something wrong when we can’t feel joy in moments where real sorrow needs to be felt and experienced. They each have their season, even from hour to hour.

Life is often like a roller coaster, but we can find joy in between the hard parts. Many times, the body holds the answer to freedoms lost that were once enjoyed. Sometimes we just need to get the head out of the way for a bit, and let go of what we think we know, and listen to the body, so we can understand what’s lacking and recognize ways to re-connect with the lost parts of the self.

It matters.

Now, excuse me while I go dance. . .

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