The unbelievable happiness of now

We are here, and so is God. Is this everywhere and everything enough?

One afternoon this week I feel good enough to work. I can sit up at my desk, even sip a cup of tea, and this is no small gift. Suddenly I look up and the sky outside my window is flooded with bubbles. Giant, glistening miracles. Each one a wonder, perfect and prismatic. 

One son rides his bike through the front yard, eating a slice of pizza as he tears through the grass. His brother runs after him, a miraculous medal bouncing off his t-shirt. Another grins to the heavens as he watches the bubbles rise, his favorite stuffed leopard dangling at his side. 

They are a portrait of childhood, a snapshot of summer, and I am their equally quintessential mother, soaking up the sweetness of here and now. The leafy trees stand witness behind the boys, all of them waving gangly limbs as they behold the same beauty. 

I keep writing sentences like I have never been so happy and I see everything so clearly. I want to erase the words or crumple them to the wastebasket because cancer is not a gift. And yet it brings such grace in its wake, constant and churning. I love every corner of my life right now: the astonishing refuge of marriage, the harvesting joy of parenting, the grace upon grace of friendship, the gift of fruitful work, the generosity of strangers, the flow of words that arrive unbidden, morning and night. 

Cancer has become a catalyst for goodness, even happiness. How can I loathe and love this at once—let alone believe it?

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In a hospital room I once tasted joy in an unforgettable way. That strange miracle became the lode star that keeps urging me onward: faith’s quest of how to get back, how to get home. 

As a theological category, joy has been what calls to my soul. Joy is deeper, wider, longer. An aquifer far underground, a lasting source. Not each day’s changing tides that can deceive on the surface.

I was wary of happiness, truth be told. I found it fleeting, flimsy, far from reliable. Sorrow and suffering have marked so much of my life that whenever I start to notice things becoming peaceful or pleasant, my guard goes up. Grief and loss must be lurking around the corner, waiting to pounce.

So believe me when I tell you I sit today in surprise. The irony that such an outwardly unhappy time—a devastating diagnosis, ensuing treatment struggles, more surgeries and uncertainty ahead—has already brought me so much of the opposite.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). Little wonder the verse starts in stark contrast. We are called to look in unexpected places for unexpected gifts.

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Have you ever noticed that the Psalms themselves, our shared book of prayers, begin in happiness?

Happy are those
   who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
   or sit in the seat of scoffers; 
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
  and on his law they meditate day and night. 
They are like trees
  planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
  and their leaves do not wither.
(Psalm 1:1-3)

What if happiness were as sturdy as an oak and as fruitful as an orchard? 

What if our ecosystems—individual and communal—depend upon happiness, drawing from its steady source like a wellspring?

What if ours is a God not just of deep joy, but delight, too? The momentary glimmer that shimmers for a second but leaves behind a blessing even after it bursts?

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The poet Jack Gilbert argues for the existential necessity of happiness: 

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

(from "A Brief for the Defense")

Decades earlier, Dorothy Day wrote of “the duty of delight.” Happiness is both vulnerability and responsibility. We need it, and it needs us.

Taken as a moral imperative, Scripture’s refrain of “happy are they” swells into an even stronger chorus. Happiness does not merely describe the domain of a lucky few but declares how we are to live: not dour or dreary or dragging our feet through the inevitable muck, but lifting our heads towards happiness as a signpost of God’s presence.

We are called to trust happiness. Even to believe it.

//

A wild August wind whips through my children’s hair. Their laughter fills the sky as bubbles float above them, big and small, high and low. 

Over and over their babysitter breathes a fresh batch into the waiting air, and we all want more, more, more. Each one gleams like a rainbow and together they become a rising arc, impossible to contain, catching every gust of wind to carry this blessing far. 

I can still see them now in my mind’s eye: the shining spheres glinting with sunlight, the simple pleasure of beholding beauty, the delight of chasing what cannot stay. My children, too, will leave one day, but this love is even sweeter for what we must let go.

A strange paradox of joy’s ephemeral cousin is how happiness sustains us beyond the moment. Even in exile, its memory has kept God’s people alive: 

Then our mouths were filled with laughter; 
our tongues sang for joy (Psalm 126:2).

What if happiness is merely the flash of remembering what is most true? We are loved beyond telling; creation is good beyond knowing; every hint of heaven is earth’s cause for joy.

We are here now, and so is God always, and this is everywhere and everything enough.