anticipate joy
though it may nest seeds of pain;
cancelled christmas trip
__________________
I often feel ungrown, childlike in more ways than I care to admit. One of the foremost perhaps is in still feeling acute disappointment at having an anticipated joy taken away. My kind eldest brother, who knows me very well, called today to say that a trip to Texas planned for this Christmas would not be wise given the current storms of Covid swirling around the country. It was a call that I perhaps knew was coming and contained wisdom in it that I fully accept. And yet, and yet—with so many others in this horrid year, I know—it always takes a little while for the adult me to calm the child me.
And so, to process my feelings, I said a prayer, brewed some Tazo Joy tea (which my dear sister-in-law in Texas always makes sure I am stocked up with each Christmas), and wrote this post.
One of my favorite proverbs comes from chapter 13, verse 12: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” It is a wondrously descriptive verse that does not really tell you how to choose. But I think the rest of the book that it is in may; I think that it instructs us to long, to lean into, to anticipate, to hope, and in the face of disappointment to try, to bend toward, to choose…joy.