Finding joy
The following passage was written by Texas Children’s Chaplain James Denham.
I don’t know about you, but I feel drained. From all directions too. Home, work, family, life all around feels draining. I have refreshed my email incessantly, and I have been caught staring off into space a time or too. I feel aches for reasons I can’t quite comprehend. I wake up ready to go and conquer my day and by the time my cup of coffee is finished I start to long for my bed! My mind feels drained from doing school work at home with the kids. I feel like I have lived through seven decades – the 80’s, the 90’s, the 00’s, the 10’s, the 20’s, March, and April! I feel tired even when I get a good night’s sleep. Perhaps you are home schooling kids, perhaps you are managing changed hours, and perhaps you are trying hard like all of our world and our hospital to figure how to move forward.
In the face of the tough stuff of pandemic life and the exhaustion it brings, we are courageous when we can take a deep breath, to be present in this one moment, to embrace this situation for all it is, and to commit ourselves to moving forward one step at a time. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch acknowledges courage is knowing “when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” Courage is seeing it through with grit and persistence, and that is what you, and we, will do, because it is who we are here at Texas Children’s. We will rise from this.
But just how do we do that? How do we have courage to move forward when we feel so tired?
It just takes one smile. One moment of courage. One moment where sunshine peeks through the clouds. At my church, there is a 100-year-old woman who loves pie. I mean, I can’t overstate how much she loves her pie! But she insisted to me and her minister recently that though her doctors told her in her virtual appointment to curtail her pie indulgence, she was still going to have her piece of pie at each meal. She declared purposefully, “I’m gonna have my pie. It makes me smile.” She was on to something! Actually, she’s right on two things. First, pie is amazing and you should definitely enjoy your pie. But second, finding your moment of joy is worth everything! Especially in the face of feeling drained all the time.
I wonder what makes you smile? Is it seeing the sunrise while you stand at the Legacy Tower elevator bay? Is it sitting at the dinner table with your spouse or children? Is it the sense of satisfaction after a well done surgery? Is it a smile that comes thinking about someone you love? Is it being on a walk or the peace of a good stretch during yoga? I am not saying that these smiles take away the drained feeling. I am advocating though for the power of a smile once a day that proclaims what Isabel Allende wrote, “We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.” Strength emerges when we don’t suspect it, and it comes through simple ordinary things. Ordinary treasures! Let your strength and joy emerge once today, and let that be your courage to see you through today. Smile simply. Have a piece of pie, seriously.