As I set up my calendar for the month, I select a quote I’ve found that speaks to me. I write it in my planner and leave space below it to capture phrases I hear or read that speak to me and relate to the quote. I found this practice centers me throughout the month, and helps me be more present in my conversations, meetings, and readings. For December 2025, my quote was simple the word “Joy.”
While on the surface Joy might seem like an easy choice heading into Advent (with a Joy-candle in the Advent wreath no less) and the celebration of Christmas at month’s end. I chose this word, however, more as an intentional counterbalance for my internal season, rather than to amplify the external holiday season. Two years ago December shifted for me … from a habit of lit trees, holiday songs, and sweets to a bit of an annual countdown to my dad’s death. As my mind recalls the still mind-boggling rapid decline of my dad between Thanksgiving and his dead mid-January, my body re-lives it – like muscle memory – the tension, gripping hold, frenetic effort to control the inevitable. No, not to stop it, but rather to moderate it. Stop the free fall and help us all land safely in the unknown. Each December, I feel this all again… echoes… whispers… shadow sensations that I know are not for now but present none the less. So, this year, I chose Joy. Not to mask my emotions and bodily sensations but to remind me, in a way that honored what I learned from dad, that “this too shall pass” and that there is always Joy (glimmers of a greater force and larger love) amidst the heartache.
Here are the quotes, lyrics, and phrases that that caught the attention of my head and heart this month regarding Joy:
- Truly!
- How the stars get into your bones
- In their hearts, humans plan their course—but the Lord establishes their steps
- Anguish is the doorway through which our personal suffering meets all the griefs that are shared by the world
- We have been defending and fighting against acknowledging everything that has been there all along and has often been traveling faithfully from afar to knock on our door
- Rest feels as if we are letting down our guard and refusing to defend what we instinctively feel must be constantly defended to the last
- The only real invitation to belief, and to believe in what I believe in, is through my actions: actions that tell others that I still actually remember
- That the source actually existed inside me in the first place
- You don’t need to be perfect; you just need to be gentle
- What if I could love the world just as it is and what if I could love everyone and every last thing in it, just as they are?
- Breath is the very first thing we give to this world and the very last thing we are allowed to take from it… moments of pure holiness
- And now love joins the dance of light
- Strong back, open heart
As I sit here thinking about the month a realization emerges, along with an accepting sigh.
Joy requires presence and an open heart. Presence and an open heart also let in everything else. And it’s in that mix of sadness, worry, wonder, loss, anticipation, fear, hope, uncertainty, and silliness that Joy resides.
Joy is not alone.
Joy comes in community.
This realization reinforced as I look to my left, to the windowsill next to my desk, and see a notebook that began January 2023. The last year of my dad’s life. This spiral-bound notebook with “love wins” over rainbow color blocking contains three years of notes about my life—when love, laughter, wonder, compassion, and confirmation (in other words, Joy) appeared through my community on average days and in complex moments.
Page after page after page of Joy in all her many forms.
Surprise. Surrender. Song. Sunrise. Solitude. Smile. Support. Splendor. Steadfast. Softness.
Her presence, often more twinkling star than blazing sun, shone through others – strangers and loved ones alike. Simple comments, gestures, experiences that lessened my load and lit my way. The Joy-giver most likely clueless as to what they transmitted… and that a Joy in and of itself. That we each emanate Joy simply by being present and in community with others.
Simply put, Joy holds my hand tightly for which I’m eternally grateful.
