Joy

Joy

Call me crazy, brave, or stupid, but I am trying the impossible, to describe a spiritual experience with wholly inadequate carnal words. Why would I try such a thing?

1-Because this is an LDS forum and if I can’t express here, where can I go?

2-Because I want to share light and happiness when so much of what we read and hear today is dark and sad.

3-And I also want to give God credit for allowing us small moments of feeling what I hope will be ubiquitous in our future lives.

Have you had times when you experienced Joy? This December I tasted Joy on three separate occasions and it has caused me to spend time pondering this highly desirable condition.

The only way I can think to share my sensation of Joy with you is to begin with a description of the setting in which I experienced it and to show pictures of when I was feeling it. Lame, I know, but I’m struggling here. Because of length, I’ll share only two of the situations.

The first time caught me very off guard. My husband and I were going to celebrate our anniversary for a couple of days in Salt Lake City. We decided to visit an elderly widow we know on our way out of town. We gave her our simple gift and sat down in her music room to visit a bit. Before long she asked if we would like to hear her play her favorite piano piece, Clair de Lune, (which she wants played at her funeral).

She played it surprisingly well for a woman of 82. As her hands danced across the keys warm emotion poured into me. Tears tricked down my cheeks as I acknowledged the genuine love I felt for this good woman. We hugged her tight and said goodbye. As I walked down her walkway to our car, I felt as though I couldn’t contain the happiness inside me. It was Joy, pure Joy that I was feeling. There was not a particle of the self involved.

I was basking in an altered state of exquisite bliss. Because my body is not accustomed to it, I was reduced to emotion. I cried tears of happiness and was happy to learn than my husband and I were sharing in the same experience. We drove away relishing in the sensations and spoke of what we were feeling for several minutes. Although it didn’t last long in terms of time, it had been so real, so impressionable, that we reflected on it again and again over the next several days.

In spite of the fun and indulgent things we did over the next few days to celebrate our anniversary, nothing compared to the joy we experienced visiting our friend. Honestly, all our activities seemed almost a desperate attempt to achieve happiness and pleasure that simply paled in comparison to the joy we had tasted at Gail’s house.

The next occasion we tasted Joy was the following Wednesday when all our children and their spouses (excepting the one who lives in Mumbai) came to the Provo City Center Temple to participate in proxy sealings for family names. During the session the sensation of joy started in me like the steady drip of an I.V.

I scanned the faces of my family members. Each person looked happy and content. So much goodness was in that room. I peered deep into one of my daughter’s eyes and we communicated without words, just as God was communicating His Joy without words to me.

We must have all been feeling it because no one wanted to leave the temple or each other after the session was over. We sat in the Celestial Room, lingered outside the temple, took pictures, until the tug of worldly affairs pulled us apart.

Joy is greater than a positive emotion, because it doesn’t originate from within us. I’m convinced Joy is a gift bestowed on us from God. I never know when it’s coming nor is there an exact formula to ensure it. It surely is a gift of grace.

Joy is more like an experience or temporary state of being. It is unearthly. It’s like a heavenly commodity that occasionally breaks through our atmosphere and quickly burns up as it rushes down upon us, allowing us to feel only fleeting particles of its most exquisite sensation.

The Joy I have sampled plants deep hope in my heart for a future life beyond the sadness and tears of this one. What a gift to have tasted it. It is more real than the earth under my feet.