Holding to Joy Through Tough Times

For those of you who know me, you know I’m a genuinely joyful person, so you may wonder where all these uncomfortably sad or hard topics are coming from. Joy is so much more than happiness. Joy transcends difficulties. Both letting go and holding on can threaten to rip a person apart; the subjects simply can’t be covered in a lighthearted way. Hope brings lightness, but journeys through life’s valleys can threaten to buckle a person under the weight of the load. Period.

I remembered hugging my boys as they left for school earlier that morning, when our lives were normal.

Standing at the bank counter, I played the part of normal, smiling at a tan man, a pregnant woman, people talking about 3-month and 6-month CDs as though future days would certainly arrive.

For the first time, I understood that an off-the-cuff, “How are you?” can strike the air from one’s lungs. I answered the question with a lie and knew I was forever changed.

Just an hour earlier, the doctor said the lump in my neck was cancer. I didn’t know how a person with cancer was supposed to feel or act. I wondered how I would tell my boys or hold my husband or look in the mirror.

I walked to my car from the bank so very aware of life, other people’s lives that would continue regardless of what happened to my body, knowing that life was good and mysterious and powerful. The previously undetected black, life-swallowing lump in my neck throbbed just a little, already having altered my life and the lives of others in yet unknown ways.

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”-Psalm 73:26

*Note: This is a memory/ not the present . . . cancer still here. We co-exist. Life is rich. But you can bet my vision has changed.

This blog post is part of a series of writing (May 31-June 2012) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about holding on and letting go.   tbergland.blogspot.com