Walls of Joy

When You Walk into Someone’s Life and the Walls Come Tumbling Down

Last week’s post had some readers worried about my tendency to think certain people are not my friends. I’ve thought long and hard about this and here’s my reaction to my own post.

The girl was hysterical—ugly crying so hard she could barely breathe. It took her parents several minutes to understand what the matter was, especially at three in the morning. When she was finally able to blurt it out, they were still puzzled. How could a fifteen-year-old be so emotional over a book?

Except that the book was about the Holocaust. And the girl was me.

I’d picked up a paperback with the cover ripped off from a box at my gramma’s retirement home. That night, I literally couldn’t put the book down. When I finished the story, a deep well of fear and love welled up, so strong that my reaction outpaced the last time I’d been hysterical—and that time, I thought aliens had landed.

The night I read this searing account of a woman in a concentration camp, I felt abject terror. I didn’t realize then that my sense of compassion was being stretched by unseen forces. All I wanted was to be comforted and at the same time, comfort the unfortunate woman in the book.

I didn’t know then that God was plumbing my heart for joy.

Joy might seem an odd reaction to a horrific period in our history. But the essence of joy springs from a well of deep love. I’d gone from outraged fear to compassion to love and then, to joy.

Back in the Old Testament, the walls of Jericho only came down after the horn blower dudes marched around seven times. To me, that picture from Sunday School embodies a recipe for joy. Sometimes, you have to do a lot of marching to shake off the dread of modern life and get back to love.

While I was marching around complaining that certain people in my life were throwing shade by not becoming my BFF, I conveniently forgot about the folks right under my whiny little nose. The neighbor with the double lung transplant who praises God. The single mom struggling to keep a run-down apartment and still feed her three kids. A sign flyer standing on the corner in one-hundred-degree heat, his sign saying, “God Bless You.”

I’d concentrated on how my glass was not only half-empty, but there was a dead bug floating in it. The Holy Spirit usually allows me to go ahead and drink my bitter, insectified cup. Yet the moment I reframed my life’s surroundings from lack to abundance, the walls of rejection and nonacceptance had to fall.

What do I see once the wall is down? I see suffering but in a different way. I feel compassionate love for those who grind out life but who never seem to catch a break. When it comes to God’s ideas about loving, suddenly I have an embarrassment of riches.

By pouring out loving kindness onto someone else’s suffering, morning and joy come swiftly.

Maybe joy comes in the morning, but when I smile at randos, let the woman behind me in the checkout go first, or tell a grumpy neighbor how much I admire her flower garden, joy seeps out of my pores. The more I allow God to point me to others’ hopes, dreams and needs, the more joy sneaks into my life.

As Paul Tillich has said, I can walk into someone’s life and give them the courage to be. I can be joyful, knowing that if only momentarily, I’ve poked my arm through the veil and grasped the whole point of existence: to give meaning to another, thereby gifting meaning to myself.

When Jesus talked about all that kingdom stuff, he wanted us to understand joy. Like children who dance just because, we too can enter this heaven when we give ourselves away. When I concentrate on helping others, my own troubles aren’t magically healed. Nope, the pain, the endless waiting, even the Holocaust is still there, raw and gaping. But I don’t have to let those wounds fester into bitterness or hate.

When life hurts so bad that you just want the pain to stop, you can’t pretend it’s not painful. You can’t deny it ever happened and you probably shouldn’t let the pain overtake you the way it did fifteen-year-old me.

You can, however, think of what would soothe your suffering, whether it’s the anniversary of your loved one’s tragic death or another day of watching that loved one slip away. The answer for me, is always more love, please.

And the way to add more love to my broken places is to look for ways to assuage another’s pain. By pouring out loving kindness onto someone else’s suffering, morning and joy come swiftly.

The kingdom really is a paradox—I find joy in comforting my brothers and sisters, in sharing the ridiculously abundant love that God has for me and for you. Today, I hope to walk into someone’s life and simply give them the courage to be. And watch the walls come tumbling down.