Somewhere Between Joy & Grief
Tiny green stalks, unfinished growth, and the quiet faith to keep tending what God is growing.
The journey to joy is…well, I feel like I need a feelings well.
Summer—with more sunlight, more outside time, and more food options—definitely makes joy easier to find. But there have been moments of grief too. Often, I’ll have a genuinely decent day, crawl into bed, and suddenly a wave of sadness washes over me. I’m not always sure if it’s anxiety about what the next day holds or grief that this day couldn’t last longer.
Maybe it’s both.
My days are funny like that—unpredictable and ever-changing. I never really know what a day will look like because I’ve somehow become the resident “aunt” and freelancer of our little people group. My schedule has flexibility, which means there’s often a quiet expectation—both from others and myself—that I should be able to jump whenever someone needs something. I still haven’t figured out whether that feeling feeds my joy or drains it. (But we can unpack that another day.)
What I do know is this: the lines between joy and sadness are not as sharply defined as they were earlier this year, and honestly, I think that’s growth.
For a long time, I thought joy and grief were opposites. I thought one had to leave for the other to arrive. But lately, they’ve been sitting beside each other more comfortably. Joy still shows up. So does sadness. Neither one seems particularly interested in canceling the other out.
We are absolutely in a growing season over here.
There’s OT for my body. There’s the podcast for my soul. There are newsletters and social media for my work. There’s grass and sunshine for my groundedness. There’s my husband for learning patience (in the best way). There are my borrowed little people teaching me resilience, flexibility, and how to laugh when I’d rather overthink.
Life feels full of tiny things that matter.
But if I’m honest, I can’t fully tell yet what kind of fruit all this growth is producing in me. Right now, it mostly feels like tiny green stalks scattered across the soil of my life—not fully formed, not ready to harvest, just…growing. Quietly. Slowly.
And honestly? There’s probably still a squirrel sitting on the proverbial fence plotting to eat them.
But maybe that’s part of faith too.
Maybe faith looks less like having visible fruit and more like trusting that God is still tending the garden when all you can see are fragile beginnings. Maybe growth is allowed to look unfinished for a while. Scripture says there is “a time to plant and a time to uproot” and I think sometimes we forget there’s also a long middle season where things simply grow underground before anyone can point to the evidence of it.
So for now, I’m trying not to rush the process.
I’m trying to notice the sunlight. To stay grounded. To let joy exist without demanding permanence from it. To let grief exist without calling it failure. And to trust that God is still producing something good in me, even if I can’t fully name it yet.
- Reanna
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