Resistance.

I used to think that joy would look like ascending the corporate ladder, financial freedom, #relationshipgoals, or traveling to beautiful, distant lands. I thought it would be found in people, things, and status, but true joy is so much deeper than that. 

It’s not just a feeling. 

It’s not just a mindset.

It’s a fruit. 

A cultivated fruit.

A practice.

Something we learn to choose daily.

It does not look like pretending that what is happening around us is not happening. 

It is not blind, nor shallow, nor disingenuous. 

It is not toxic positivity. 

No.

Joy looks at what is happening with honesty, yet affirms that our greatest hope is not lost nor found in the events of the present situation. 

I used to look at my mother crazy when she told me, “Shaneez, joy is a promise.” 

Back then, I could not see past my fear and current crisis long enough to understand what she was saying to me.

My mother’s sense of peace in chaos always both unnerved and intrigued me. 

Still, her unshakeable faith always helped me weather the worst storm.

My faith and my joy is no longer second-hand.

After coming to the other side of many of my own storms, I now know what I knew then was not joy.

I knew happiness. At times ecstasy and euphoria. But I did not know joy. 

I know, because what I called “joy” then was something I always fought to hold onto. 

I know true joy for myself now. 

I know, because I’ve experienced it the strongest during the “worst year of our lives”

I know because with all that has happened, I was never in search of it because it never let me go. 

Now, I find joy everywhere. In places big and small. 

My circumstances may change, but my joy remains, rebellious in its resolve that it belongs to me.