The Restoration of Joy as a Whack-a-Mole 6/30/13

I started to wonder today if I will ever feel pure joy again.  The true, pure, bubbling-from-inside joy that we feel when something is incorrupt, happy , adorable, innocent, comical, surprising......you get it, right?

It's as if my joy has become a whack-a-mole.  I hear something funny.  I laugh.  I think: "oh wait until I tell Scott.."  whack.  I see a commercial for a cool new show.  "Cool! I'll have to tell Scott!"  whack.
The kitten (is anything a more pure joy than a kitten?) is jumping great distances, playing with a new toy, just being so joyfully CUTE - and I think "I can't wait until Scott sees her...." WHACK!!!

If I'm with someone - maybe one of you that actually reads this - and I laugh......it's not fake!  I do still find things funny, amusing, frustrating, you name it!  It's just that when I feel those emotions, I had thirty years of being able to share them with him.  Funny was funny twice.  Frustration got shared and ridiculed.  (Sometimes the ridicule was pointed at me for getting frustrated!!)  Cute animal stuff was a staple of our lives.  If one of the dogs was asleep, dreaming and yelping, sitting an adorable way - we had a code - "Look at big white dog!" - because we knew saying their name would distract them and change the moment.

I know that joy is promised from God.  I can still hear that lady singing "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation...."in church when I was young.  That particular quote came from David - yes, the Old Testament King David.  But David needed his joy restored because he had sinned big time (adultery, murder....big time).  What did I do to deserve this? Was this a plan for him and me from the beginning?  I don't think I would have agreed to it. Why us? Why me? One of the many questions I have for that big Q&A session in the sky. 

I will try, you know.  I don't intend to become a depressed, sad, mean person.  But don't forget that underneath the trying, I'm not whole.  He was indeed my other half, so I'm not complete any more.  But will I ever feel joy without getting whacked?  I'm not sure.  I think all happy occasions that may occur for me for the rest of my life will be tinged with sadness.  I can't imagine it happening any other way.  So please understand if something really happy or funny is going on - and I just close my eyes and get quiet for a minute.  It's to absorb the whack.