Advent Week 3: Joy in Advent

Joy, it turns out, often arrives quietly. Sometimes it looks like light through the blinds. Sometimes it looks like peppermint mocha in your coffee and a tiny dog snoring.

This coming week is Joy in Advent. What does it mean to have joy in Advent? It means to feel joy while you’re waiting. It’s not unlike the other themes I’ve talked about the last couple of weeks, so this time I want to turn toward something more concrete: Feeling joy in the simple pleasures of life, amidst the darkness and the heaviness and the chaos of everyday living.

I’ll tell you what—one of the most simple joys in life is being able to sleep lying down.

No, I’m serious. Read that again. One of the best joys in life is being able to sleep lying down, and I’ll tell you why.

On Memorial Day 2017—I was changing the sheets on my bed, pulled them up, and something ruptured in my right shoulder. I couldn’t move my arm. I actually vomited because of the pain, and I drove myself to the hospital, because that’s how I roll. They told me I needed to see an orthopedic doctor the next day.

So I did. I found a good orthopedic surgeon and learned that I had torn my labrum. I wasn’t even really sure what that meant at the time. What I do know is this: I had ignored pain in my shoulder for over nine months because I felt too busy to see a doctor. My body finally demanded my attention.

I ended up needing reconstructive shoulder surgery: biceps tenodesis, labral sutures. I have a bionic shoulder now. But what I remember most about that time, beyond the excruciating pain—because I do remember that—is that I could not sleep lying down.

From Memorial Day until mid-September, I slept upright because it hurt too much to lie flat. I remember the first night I was finally able to stretch out on my bed, my head on a pillow. It was a revelation. A simple act I had taken for granted every single day before then.

Fast-forward to this past week.

I threw out my lower back—a muscle spasm to end all muscle spasms—after doing too much on Monday and sleeping on a Sleep Number bed, which deflated in the middle of the night. It was a perfect storm for my lower lumbar. I woke up Tuesday morning and could barely stand. I hobbled around the house with my cane, managed to feed Sophie, get a heating pad on my lower back, order a new simple bed from Costco, and arrange to haul away my Sleep Number bed. (After waking up like that, I never wanted to see it again. I was so mad. The break up was fast and furious.)

Because I didn’t have a bed, and because my back hurt so badly, I slept sitting up on the couch. I couldn’t stretch out. I had to give my spine time to recover and my muscles a chance to settle down. And just like that, I was transported back to the summer of 2017.

Then last night—through the miracle of our modern distribution system—my bed arrived. I stretched out tentatively, half-afraid of what would happen, and slept soundly for twelve hours, lying down. When I woke this morning, I thought: there is no greater joy in life than being able to sleep lying down.

But then something else happened.

I got my iPad mini and my cup of coffee and fed Sophie. We trotted back to my office, where I sat on the couch for morning reading. I watched the light filter through the blinds. I turned on KBACH and listened to classical Christmas music. I sipped coffee with peppermint mocha creamer—which is appropriate for the season—put a blanket over my legs, and thought: this is joyful.

These moments of pure embodiment after pain. After the release of struggle. Sitting in a newly renovated home, on a well-worn, well-used couch I’ve had for over a decade and can’t imagine parting with. Responding to emails from friends. Laughing at a text from Bertha. Reading. Getting ready to FaceTime my mom to see how she’s feeling this morning.

What more is there? What more could there be? What more would I want?

And the answer is—not much.

I mean, if my back can continue to behave, that would be awesome.

This is the kind of joy Advent teaches us to notice. Not loud. Not shiny. Not detached from suffering. But fully embodied, fully present, and deeply grateful.

As Simone Weil wrote, “Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.”

And from Scripture:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

on them light has shined.”

—Isaiah 9:2

Joy, it turns out, often arrives quietly. Sometimes it looks like light through the blinds. Sometimes it looks like peppermint mocha in your coffee and a tiny dog snoring. Sometimes it looks like finally being able to lie down.