Joy Unknown

Today is Resurrection Sunday and we are staying home from celebrating with the saints because the babies are sick – runny noses, little coughs, sleepy eyes. We rise and have breakfast and soon they are all worn out again, and down for naps they go – and I sit at the table with my husband and my trusty iPad, and read Scriptures and listen to hymns and read blog posts pertaining to our resurrected Savior.

And as one song in particular moves me, it strikes me that even when my inside shouts with joy, my exterior stays rigid. I am the control freak – the perfectionist – the one so concerned about how I appear to others. And to me it had always seemed strange to raise the hands during a song or to stand up to praise or to sway or to dance, no matter how calmly and with self-control it might be done. I sing a song and recognize that the words are doctrinally sound and I say “Amen” and I do not allow myself to be moved. I am firm, immoveable, and no sound of music can sway me from my rigidity.

And for the first time, I have been questioning myself about it, and today brings the questions that have been swirling back to the forefront. Why am I so staid when singing about Christ's resurrection? Why do I sit still in my chair, face barely cracking a smile, and uttering no more than a deeply cultured and profoundly civilized, “Amen?”

What if my children were awake at this moment and watching me? Would my calmness make the love of Christ look like a thing to be sought after and longed for, His Person one to be hotly pursued and passionately loved? Would the resurrection seem miraculous or immaterial? Celebratory or cerebral?

Will it seem real to them, as they see me laugh aloud when watching an old TV show but sit silent and unmoved during the songs of our faith? Is it possible that I have taken the verse, “Let all things be done decently and in order” a little farther than it was intended to go?

What if I have focused so much on doctrine – important as it is – that I have forgotten that doctrine must have feet and hands and breath to fully function? What if I brought myself down from my high place of thinking and knowledge and acknowledged that the doctrine which is known should lead inevitably to joy unknown?

And joy unknown can lead to joy unbridled.

Didn't David dance for joy? Am I more spiritual than he? Am I superior – more mature, more civilized, more...proper?

Perhaps I should be careful lest my propriety makes the Gospel look dead to my children. And perhaps if so-called “impropriety” be the food of joy to make my children hungry, perhaps I should add a little more of it to my life.

I don't mean impropriety in the sense of sin, of course. I mean letting go of my own ideas of what is “proper” and instead turning to child-like faith. If a child receives a gift, does she placidly say, “Thank you, because you are good and you give good gifts and I am thankful,” or does she shout and dance and throw back her head and laugh - arms spread wide to unbridled joy?

What if my children learned to grow mature by seeing a mother unafraid to act childlike for her Father? Will they learn true doctrine if I teach them only true words and live cold and closed to joy? Or will they learn it better if I not only teach it with words, but show by my every action and my readiness to rejoice in Christ that it is real and it has changed me and it is power and life and light and bread and living water?

Will they be better taught by a mama who sits with hands folded quiet in the lap and listens to a hymn and says, “That is lovely,” - by a mama who walks outside into the wild beauty of nature with its devastating color and crushing weight of glory from the Glory-Giver and merely sighs and says, “Isn't God's Creation good?”

Not that this would be bad. But would it be an improvement if that mama, instead, listened to a hymn and when the soul rose in praise and speechless wonder – if she let go of staid propriety, raised her hands, let the tears fall, or laughed, or danced, face turned up to Jesus and basking in the wonder of His grace? Or if, instead, when faced with His glorious Creation, she dared to raise the hands, perhaps to spin in the grass, to use both verbage and body language to show that she loves passionately and gives glory to the Creator for the good things He has given?

I think of these things and I believe that it is time for change. I imagine that it will feel awkward to me at first, but even children must learn to laugh. A baby's first chuckles sound distorted and choked and mangled, but they are precious to her parents' ears. A child's first dance is uncoordinated and often ends in a fall to the ground amidst tangled curls and giggles. But it is beautiful to her daddy and mommy.

Perhaps a little raising of the hands, a little head-thrown-back-for-joy laughter, a little dancing, a little shouting for delight, a little more exuberant wonder...

I am ready. Lord, make me ready. Help me to show a vibrant and real and exuberant faith and joy to our children. Not forced, not foolish – but full of joy unknown.