Indestructible joy
Why we choose to enter our pain
Pretend we’re sitting in a cozy corner of a coffee shop today. You’re holding your favorite warm drink and I’m sipping my standby hot chocolate. We’re feeling relaxed as a fireplace crackles nearby the the rain falls outside our window. Something about it feels safe and nourishing. As if we could tell the truthiest truth about our lives and everything would be okay.
You lean in just a bit and ask, “Jenny. Help me understand. I’ve spent most of my life avoiding the challenging emotions and inner turmoil of life. Isn’t that what most of us do? Why would anyone want to look at that stuff? Everything in me to run the opposite direction. I’d prefer to pretend it’s not there. Life seems to be mostly fine so I don’t think it’s a big deal. Yet you talk all the time about doing the opposite. Why?”
My soul smiles so big that my face breaks into an echo smile as I sip my warm drink. “Such a good question. Even asking the question is brave. Thank you.”
“I spent the first thirty-three years of my life doing what you just said. I numbed and scrolled and ignored and denied my inner life. I ignored it so much, I got fibromyalgia when I was 17. I got diagnosed with an anxiety and panic disorder at 27. I could only outrun my inner world for so long before she turned on me.
One day the pain got bad enough that my entire being turned inward to ask a new question. What is so scary in there? Why am I so miserable? I don’t think I can avoid this one moment longer.
So I stopped.
Over the next eight years, I slowly learn to look inside. I meet the edges of my fear. We get to know each other. Build some trust. She tells me stories I’d forgotten about. I tell her things I wished I’d told her decades earlier. She seems to understand why. I learn from wise humans different ways to access my inner chaos. As I build a new relationship with my self, surprising things keep happening.
It feels amazing.
The joy that pulsates through my body after wrestling with a pain point that I allow to unravel is indescribable. (Don’t worry. I’m a writer. Challenge accepted). That joy is unlike any dopamine rush my favorite snack or screen can manifest. It’s a joy that feels indestructible. Because it is. It’s a joy that no other human can steal because it’s true in my body.
The acknowledgment, feeling, and release of a long-held painful belief and pattern is something no other human can do for me. It is always my choice to really look at the thing that hurts. It is always my choice to learn how to feel it, not just talk about it or think about it. It is always my choice to let the pain go. To see others as the hurting humans they are. To choose healing instead of further harm. To set boundaries and love differently. To dream again.
That. Feels. Amazing.
It makes my nervous system hum with healing.
Why would I not continue being curious about the pain that hides in the corners of my life?
Over and over and over and over I enter this rhythm. The pain, the death, the rising. As a human walking in the way of Jesus, it’s the gospel story lived out in my bones. For others, it’s the way of nature and being human. Whatever we call it, it’s a pattern of healing that spills forth incredible gifts for each of us.
So as long as I can, I will be another voice in the world gently inviting us to enter the places in ourselves we long decided were off limits.
The best stuff is in there. I promise.
It will be uncomfortable and awkward and painful first.
Then it will be beautiful.
Keep going, my dear friend. I’m right here with you.”
I imagine you sitting back in your chair and releasing a deep breath. The kind that reach to your toes.
We continue to sip our drinks in comfortable silence. Reflecting on this life we both live. The challenges. The curiosities. The grief. The love. It sits between us and for now, it’s enough.
You hold up your mug and I clink my cup with yours. Here’s to the journey. We’re so grateful to travel this road together.
May it be so.
Praise for Still Here
“Not long ago, I watched as Jenny navigate the challenging path of losing a beloved family member. I was losing my mom at the same time. My mom, like her family member, was my hero. The loss was overwhelming. The power of it was unexplainable, even “un-expressable.” That is until Jenny’s posts about her loss.
Her posts allowed me to move through that time of intense grief. She was able to create words, and stories, and poems that gave me opportunities to grieve in ways that were certainly needed at the time. She opened paths that I could walk, and became a friend who understood. And now all of that, and so much more is contained in her new book.
Still Here is poignant, deep and meaningful, but even those words don’t describe the power found within these pages. Her ability to take complex and often confusing feelings and translate them into ways that allow readers to sense, and feel, and understand their grief is a very real gift. She does it with profound simplicity.
One poem is simply five lines, no more than fifteen words. But unwrapping those five lines takes readers toward and into deep places of mourning, loss, and yet it offers hope. This book is for anyone experiencing a loss. It is a gift to be given, a tool to be utilized, and certainly a guide for the journey that will be taken by all of us at some point.”
— Rev. Brad P. Beeman, United Methodist Pastor & Former National Director of Community Support
Dear readers — Your support of Still Here means so much to my grieving and hopeful heart. We’re less than two weeks away from its’ arrival. Learn more about the book here. I’m moving slowly and gently through this season as we share the book and grieve the one-year anniversary of my brother’s passing. I’m so grateful we’re walking these life journeys together. Big love. — Jenny