Fighting Back with Joy

For several weeks, we’ve been reading Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears by Margaret Feinberg, and we’ve reached the end of the discussion. But not the end of the book, because this is a book that stays with you.

It finishes with “Bonus Tracks” – “5 Things to Say When You Don’t Know What to Say,” applicable not only to a cancer patient but also to any serious situation; “8 Things Those Facing Crisis Can’t Tell You (But Wish They Could);” “6 Lessons I Learned from Crisis;” “A Letter from Leif,” Feinberg’s husband and chief caregiver; and a playlist of music to accompany each chapter.

Each of the tracks (well, perhaps not the playlist) could have been books. Instead, they’re short, succinct summaries, wisdom learned the very hardest way – the wisdom that comes from living an experience that at many points could have ended in death.

It was the bonus tracks, in fact, that punched home something I knew from the beginning of the book but which I don’t think I acknowledged. Books are objects, yes, objects you hold in your hands or view on an e-reader like Kindle. You enjoy them or you don’t; you learn from them or you don’t. Good books become part of you; the best books change your life.

Fight Back with Joy is a giving book. Feinberg gives away a good part of herself in this book. One of the lessons she learned from her fight with breast cancer is that serious illness changes you. She may have been a giving person before it; she is a different giving person after it, a person who gives with God’s sense of giving.

It is a generous book. That’s not a redundant statement. Feinberg is lavish with her giving in this book. Little is excluded. If you want to know what experimental chemotherapy is like, or what to expect when you first look in the mirror after a double mastectomy, you will find it here. Or what you experience when you hair falls out in clumps.You want to know how difficult a cancer fight is for the primary caregiver, you will find that, too.

It is an honest book. Feinberg gets angry. She gets angry with God, with friends who don’t know what to say so they stop coming around, with her family, and with herself. There were days and times when she wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

Margaret Feinberg

It is a courageous book. Even being on the other side of the cancer experience, and having survived the cancer, its treatment, and related surgeries, it is clear that Feinberg never quit, although there were times when she wanted to. She fought, she fought with everything she had, everything her husband had, what friends and family had. She fought, too, with what God had, and what He had from the beginning was no guarantee she would survive. She fought with faith.

And Fight Back with Joy is a profoundly human book. Feinberg made a choice early on in dealing with the disease. She would fight with joy. There were days when there was no joy left, and yet it was still there. One of those days, when she found despair, led her to give away red balloons to fellow cancer patients and their families. She discovered the joy again, enough to continue the fight. And it is often the joy of a child, an adult who learns the joy of being a child of God.

This is a book for those who suffer a serious illness, and those who don’t. This is a book for caregivers to learn what to expect, and for those who are never called upon to be caregivers. This is a book for women and for men. It is about shock, and fear, and joy, and depression, and despair, and faith, and giving in, and fighting on when there’s little left to fight with.

This is a book that will change you.

Jason Stasyszn and Sarah Salter have been leading us in a discussion on Fight Back with Joy. Today concludes the book. To see more posts on the “Bonus Tracks,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by Yiting Liu via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Joy Happens – Unplanned

I’ve been reading Margaret Feinberg’s Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, and I find this:

“Joy flows out of unsuspecting, and often daunting, places,” she writes. “It’s illogical, irrational, downright crazypants to think that great adversity could possibly lead to a fuller life. Yet that’s what I’ve discovered over many months of being poisoned, burned, injected, sliced, and diced.”

I pay attention to what Feinberg says, because she is writing as a breast cancer patient and survivor. She has been through the “cure is worse than the disease” treatment, and she pointedly says she does not consider cancer to be a gift.

But she finds joy, sometimes in the very belly of the cancer beast. Like when she handed out red balloons to other cancer patients and their families.

Joy is a word that we Christians often associate with their faith. Both we as children sang and with our own children sing “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart / Where? / down in my heart / down in my heart.”

The fact is that joy is something that we can’t plan for. It’s something that happens as a result, often the unintended result, of something else.

Standing in silence Canterbury Cathedral in 2013 for the 3 p.m. prayer time, I was nearly overwhelmed with joy by saying the Lord’s Prayer with 27 Japanese tourists.

Sitting in a church in Erfurt, Germany, interviewing a young pastor in 2002, joy flooded me, the pastor and the video cameraman to the point of tears.

At a church service at London’s Westminster Chapel, the time of “silent prayer” was replaced by speaking individual prayers out loud at the same time, and the church felt washed by joy as the voices rose and fused upward.

Or the first time I heard my first grandchild say something that sounded remotely like “Grandpa.”

Or during a particularly dark time, receiving an unexpected note that said simply, “I’m praying for you.”

Joy comes unexpected and unplanned, often sneaking in and upending you.

I can remember years ago, sitting next to my young wife and mother of my five-month-old son while she awakened from surgery to remover a possibly cancerous thyroid. When she awoke, her first words were, “Am I OK?” And the joy I experienced telling her YES! was a wonder, for both of us.

Feinberg is right. We find joy in often daunting places. It arrives unplanned. It brings with it the ability to bear often great hardship.

It is a gift.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Fight Back with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, “Where I Never Expected to Find Joy,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph: Westminster Chapel in London, where the spoken aloud prayers went up and the joy came down. 

The Sting of Silence

Some years back, actually a lot of years back, I got caught up in a community controversy. Some surprising things were going on, some officials turned deaf ears to community concerns, and then two people I truly respected asked me to become spokesperson for a group to challenge the officials.

I did, and it was a wild time for a few months. It was also tense, and difficult, and we experienced the inevitable blowback. The attacks became bitter, and personal. At one point, the spokesperson was essentially abandoned. I felt deserted and left to dangle in the wind. It was a dark time, lightened only by a single voice of unexpected support – an elderly lady whom I had never met wrote a letter to our local newspaper.

Margaret Feinberg knows the sting of silence in far more personal terms than I do. She is standing in front of a mirror, staring at the scars left by a double mastectomy, and virtually no friend has called, written, left a note, said anything, provided support, held her. The group that had surrounded her and her husband seemed to have vanished.

She tells the story in Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears. The heart scars, she says, those scars of abandonment, hurt worse than the physical scars she was staring at.

She writes down names. And then she makes another list – the names of the people she had abandoned in an hour of need. She understands that the failing of her friends is her failing, too. And she understands that the most common reason for this abandonment is that people don’t know what to say, and so they hold back.

Jesus knew what this all-too-human failing of abandonment was like. Feinberg notes that of the 12 disciples who followed Jesus through good times and bad, those steadfast 12, one would betray him and 10 would hide in fear. Only one would be at the foot of the cross, the one who stood with the two Marys. Only one was there when Jesus drew his last breath and said “It is finished.” The rest hid.

We have all failed.

We have all been failed.

We know what abandonment is because it’s happened to us.

And we know what it is because we’ve done it. 

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Fight Back with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, “Life is Too Short Not to Do This,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by Julie Gentry via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

When Nothing is Everything

When was the last time you prayed for nothing, nada, zero?

I can’t recall a time I did that. I can recall praying for something not to happen, and I can remember not praying, but I can’t remember a time I prayed for zero.

“Please, Lord, give ne nothing. Give me zero.”

Margaret Feinberg can.

In Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, Feinberg recounts how to respond to people who asked how they could pray for her. Prayer sustained her and her husband through her breast cancer diagnosis, treatment and surgeries, so she didn’t take the question as some trifling politeness Christians often ask in difficult situations like this. (When we don’t know what to say, we can always ask it.)

She began to answer the questions with “zero,” as in “zero cancer cells, zero complications, zero side effects, zero allergic reactions, zero suffering, zero medical errors, zero bad test results, zero sleepless nights, zero night terrors.”

Feinberg’s prayer was for zero. For nothing. But it was also everything.

But that might have not been the outcome. Zero might now have been the answer.

Feinberg turns to the book of Daniel (I’m finding Daniel in all kinds of places this week). And she finds an answer in the account of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the three taken from Jerusalem with Daniel to be trained in Babylon. They would not worship the statue of gold erected by Nebuchadnezzar. The king had them taken to the furnace to be burned alive.

And they told the king that their God could deliver them from death in the furnace. But they acknowledge that this may not be the outcome. “But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.”

But if not. That’s where Feinberg finds the joy – and the fight with joy.

Feinberg had to consider both a prayer answered with zero and a prayer answered with but if not. She had to be prepared for both, and she knew the cancer could be erased, or that it was still there. And while she may not have felt particularly brave as she dealt with all of the effects of chemotherapy, she was exactly that. Brave. Courageous. She had to stare both life and death in the face and be willing to say but if not.

Her lesson has both personal and corporate applications personal in how we deal with setbacks, debilitating illness, death of a loved one, or other personal tragedy. And corporate in what the church, the body of Christ, is becoming aware of in society.

Storm clouds are gathering for Christians and the church in Western culture. The storm may not break for a year, or for ten. But it is coming. We can pray for zero. But we have to consider if the answer is, instead, but if not.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we've been reading Fight Bak with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, "When Nothing Means Everything," please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph by Ken Kistler via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Girl with the Red Balloons

You’re sitting in a hallway in a clinic or hospital, waiting your turn for chemotherapy. This is not a place you want to be; this is a place you never prepared yourself for. If you look at the other faces, you see the same pain, the same gauntness, the covered heads missing hair that stares back you when you have the courage to look in the mirror. 

And here comes a woman, looking and feeling as bad as you do, and she tells you she is here for the same reason you are, to get those treatments that convince you that the treatment is as bad as the disease.  

She gives you a red balloon. Or she hands one to your husband or wife. Or your three-year-old granddaughter. Or she offers a hug. And you realize she is just as physically weak as you are. 

After weeks of enduring chemotherapy and its associated treatments that were debilitating on a good day and horrible on the bad days, Margaret Feinberg has reached the end of her rope. She had been fighting back with joy, but she found herself in a place where she had no more joy to give. 

A Bible verse comes to mind. Acts 20:35. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” 

Jesus said it, although, as Feinberg points out, none of the Gospel accounts record it. It is St. Paul speaking, and he said he is quoting Jesus.  

It’s how Jesus lived his entire life. 

And in the depth of pain and despair, Feinberg asks herself a question. 

Am I supposed to give away joy, even when I have no joy to give? 

As she writes in Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, “Flat broke in mind, body, and spirit, generosity was not a spiritual discipline I wanted to practice.” 
She wanted a passport out of pain, not a ticket to encouraging others. 

But then she realizes that the statement contains no qualifiers or exemptions. 

So she finally answers her question with red balloons. 

I suspect that a healthy person handing our red balloons in a cancer treatment center might be mildly appreciated, or perhaps possibly resented. What does a healthy person really know about the pit of chemotherapy? 

But Feinberg was one of them. She was going through it with them. She was feeling just as awful as they were. She identified with the pain. More to the point, she was living the pain.  

That’s how lives can be changed.

When you people know you understand, they respond.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Fight Back with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, “You’ve Got to Give This Away,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Fight Back with Joy: Praying for Springs

For a time. in between formal communications jobs, I had my own consulting business. The first two years were good ones, but then a recession caught up with me and business dried up. It didn’t disappear, but it became very, very difficult; jobs were few and far between.

In our Sunday School class, we shared what was going on and asked for prayer. Some weeks later, an envelope containing three hundred dollars inside of a card showed up in mail. No name. Just a $300 gift.

We were not in dire financial straits. But we were discouraged. And that $300 gift was a blessing far beyond the amount of the money. It was finding a little oasis in the desert.

We have each experienced desert times –when everything seems pointless, your body is close to exhaustion, you don’t think you can read one more newspaper without throwing up, an illness is more and more debilitating, a family problem that seems never to be resolved, a crisis in faith or hope. We’ve each been there, and likely more than once.

Life is not easy.

In Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, Margaret Feinberg talks about those desert times, and how important finding those springs in the desert can be. While she’s struggling with the side effects of chemotherapy, she receives a reference to the Book of Judges, the story Othniel and how he wins the hand of Caleb’s daughter, Achsah. After they’re married, she asks her father for a piece of thriving land in the desert, one with springs of water. And Caleb complies, giving her and her husband both lower and upper springs – an assured supply and more than she asked for.

Feinberg is able to find her own springs of water, one of which was a Bill Cosby concert in Vermont. These springs are vital for all of us; they are what keep us going when we face trials, problems, and situations that we hope are problems and not conditions that have to be endured.

As many times as I’ve read the Book of Judges, I did not remember the story of Othniel and Achsah. It’s right there in the first chapter, verses 11 to 15 (Feinberg paraphrases it as only a storyteller can). What I did remember was that Othniel eventually became one of the “Judges” or rulers.

Those springs of water worked well for him, too.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Fight Back with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, “One Prayer You Don’t Pray But Should,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph: Desert Oasis via Wikipedia.

The Prophet of Why, God?

She loses her hair. She gets mouth sores and receding gums. Anemia, fatigue and rashes become familiar companions, as does irritable bowel syndrome. She loses her toenails. Not to mention the pain that’s never far away.

Dealing, or perhaps simply trying to endure and outlast the side effects of chemotherapy for her breast cancer, Margaret Feinberg gets a phone call.

One hundred days after her breast cancer was confirmed, she learns her father has also been diagnosed with cancer. Her mother now has both a husband and her only child dealing with cancer.

Does this sound like Job?

Feinberg didn’t turn to Job. As she describes in Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, she turns to the prophet Habakkuk.

Like several of his fellow prophets, Habakkuk could be called “the prophet of why, God?”

The Lord tells Habakkuk that Babylon will be used to bring judgment on Judah. And yet the book doesn’t describe all the terrible things that will happen.

Here’s what Feinberg learns: “Unlike other Old Testament prophets, Habakkuk doesn’t speak God’s Word to us as much as he speaks our words to God. He voices our doubts and disappointments. He enunciates that which leaves us puzzled and perplexed. Like us, he caves in to the temptation to tell God how to do a better job.”

Why, God?

What are you thinking here, God?

Exactly what is the point, God?

God, I’m waiting. Are you listening?

Habakkuk complains. And the Lord answers. Habakkuk complains again. And the Lord answers again. The third time, Habakkuk doesn’t complain. Instead, he prays.

As Feinberg notes in her book, the prayer is rather remarkable. It comes down to this: no matter what happens, I will rejoice. I can starve, but I will rejoice. I don’t understand Your ways, but I will rejoice. Always.

That’s the point Feinberg comes to. No matter what, she will rejoice.

And she does. She even gets reprimanded for singing a hymn while getting an MRI.

She was supposed to stay still, but rejoicing people have difficulty with that.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Fight Back with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, “The Side of Joy No One Talks About,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

How to Throw the Best Party Ever

In  Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears,  Margaret Feinberg discusses one way she dealt with the awful physical pain she experienced with chemotherapy for breast cancer.

She threw herself a party.

Actually, she threw herself several parties. She celebrated, by herself, with her husband, and with others. She partied, she ate good food, she grabbed on to savor everything good thing life had to offer.

The partying had a purpose. It was an act of defiance, defying a disease and a course of treatment that is devastating physically, emotionally and spiritually. But defy she did. She fought back with celebration.

All this partying and celebration brought to mind Mickey Easterling.

From the time I was 8 or 9 to my senior year in college, I spent a lot of time at my father’s printing business in downtown New Orleans. Most of that time was spent working – especially weekends and summers – and some of that time was spent partying, like at Mardi Gras.

During the work times, I learned how to do just about everything – operate the printing machines, the paper cutter (a small guillotine), the postage metering machine, the collating machine, the addressograph, and even a machine that tied packages in string. I made deliveries all over downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter. I took checks to the bank. After I turned 15 and got my driver’s license, I drove big bags of mail to the New Orleans Post Office.

And I met a lot of unusual people.

The office was often a veritable parade of politicians, candidates, socialites, businessmen, non-profits and others seeking printing and mailing services. Once (when I wasn’t there) a young man came into the office seeking to have pro-communist propaganda printed; my father showed him the door. The young man’s name was Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination of President Kennedy, the FBI was crawling all over the downtown business district, tracing Oswald’s footsteps and activities, and they interviewed my father because of that one short meeting.

The parade of customers included quite a few local “characters” and celebrities, and one of them was a socialite named Mickey Easterling. She was a small woman with a large (very large) presence, given to flamboyant clothes and a distinctive, loud voice recognized anywhere. I remember seeing her many times, in my father’s office as well as her own office and home. She was a gracious and friendly as she was loud. Everyone merited a “hello how ya doin’ dawlin” from her. And she meant it.

She was a “presence” in New Orleans, and knew how to get things done. As much as she mixed with the powers that ran the city, she tended to favor the poor and disenfranchised, never forgetting her own background and upbringing. She was known to African-Americans as a tireless champion of civil rights – not the easiest of things to be in 1960s and 1970s New Orleans and in the circles she ran with.

Mrs. Easterling died last year. Instead of a wake or visitation, she threw herself a party in the lobby of the Saenger Orleans Theater. You’d have to see the lobby to appreciate it. The ticket office is on Canal Street, and you have to walk a good marbled half block through the long lobby to reach the theater itself. Entering Mrs. Easterling’s last party from Canal Street, you’d walk up that marbled hallway to the area in front of the theater doors, where guests and mourners found the guest of honor waiting.

 I am not making this up. You can read the newspaper reports.

She was a character in a city famous for its characters. And while I still can’t decide whether that either the wackiest thing I’ve ever heard of, or the one in poorest taste, or both, it was vintage Mickey Easterling.

It was also an act of defiance. She couldn’t stop death, but she didn’t have to surrender to it. And she wouldn’t.

Margaret Feinberg defied illness and pain, and fought back with joy. And a lot of parties. She wouldn’t surrender to breast cancer, no matter what happened. And what she was learning was that the outcome was less important than the fight. She didn’t know how it would end, but she was determined not to be defeated. And she wasn’t.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading Fight Back with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, “How to Throw the Best Party Ever,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph by Kevin Casper via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

The Joy of Mourning

I’m reading Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears by Margaret Feinberg. This is a story about breast cancer, and how Feinberg decided from the diagnosis forward that she would fight it – with joy. This particular chapter, “When You’re Tearing Your Hair Out,” is the one when the physical impact of chemotherapy becomes noticeable to any and all – Feinberg loses her hair. 

And in the process she discovers mourning. She understands why she reacts the way she does, going back to a traumatic incident from childhood. She can’t seem to do anything without noticing that she’s losing her hair. She even sheds on the dog. And she knows her hair will eventually grow back, but this is hard.  

She teaches herself to mourn. She reads the gospels. And she studies Jewish rites of mourning. She learns what it means to “tear your clothes,” and she does a bit of tearing of her own.  

And she learns something else, perhaps the most important lesson of mourning. Mourning allows you to make space for the joy. 

I read this chapter on my lunch break, sitting by myself at a table by a window in the company cafeteria that manages to catch the sun. And what I understand while I’m reading about a woman learning the joy of mourning in the midst of breast cancer is that I am going through a mourning of my own, and I didn’t even realize it.  

I retire from the day job on May 1. I informed management of my intention to retire last June. I made the decision to retire; I didn’t have retirement “done to me.”  

Nothing was announced at the time; only gradually did my decision become known (surprisingly, for a place where news like this moves at the speed of light, it didn’t become broadly known for about six months).  

Retirement is now less than two months away. What Feinberg taught me in this chapter of her book is that I am not mourning the loss of a job (the plan is to stay plenty busy after May 1). But what I am mourning is the closure of what has been a significant part of my work for a long time.  

It’s odd that I should be mourning at all. I worked – for six years – as a speechwriter for a CEO dubbed by Fortune Magazine as one of America’s seven toughest bosses. (Fortune was right.) I have done corporate social media in spite of the company thinking it’s without value and critics of the company spewing hate, threats of violence and profanity every chance they get. Convincing even many of my colleagues in communications that social media matters has been a constant battle and daily frustration.  

Most people would be thrilled to be bailing out. 

I won’t miss any that; that’s not the loss I’m mourning. And I’m not mourning what might have been; I’ve never regretted any of the career choices I’ve made over the years. Nor am I mourning what I still had to offer, which was more, far more, than management knew.  

I’m mourning the loss of my familiar structure of work; I’m mourning the loss of working with the good, competent, skilled people I work with on a daily basis; I’m mourning not seeing the woman at the company credit union I’ve talked to almost every day for the last decade and Char the custodian. 

My transition to retirement has actually been helped by the two colleagues I was closest to leaving the company in recent months. One went to another company; the other simply decided it was time to leave. They happened to be the two people I talked with, commiserated with, plotted with, and most enjoyed working with. Not seeing them and talking with them every day has left a gap.  

My transition is also being helped by the teams I work with online at The High Calling and Tweetspeak Poetry. 

What Feinberg says about mourning is, I believe, critically important: mourning makes space for the joy to come. 

And joy is coming. 

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing Fight Back with Joy. To see what others have to say on this chapter, please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact. 

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Life as Wilderness Trek

As she tells the story in Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, five days after her first round of chemotherapy, Margaret Feinberg kept a commitment to lead a spiritual retreat in Maine. Everything was going fine until the third day and the scheduled nine-mile hike up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park.  

Almost from the outset, everything began to go wrong, for Margaret and the group. Some became separated from the main group. Others began to fatigue and peeled off, returning to base. A couple got lost temporarily. Some got sunburned. Margaret herself began to lose energy, decided to hurry back, took the wrong trail (with most of the group following her) and had to climb back up to find the right trailhead. 

That sounds like a metaphor. A metaphor for life. Wrong turns. Enthusiasm finding a harsh reality. Making wrong choices. Making bad choices. Physical problems. Assuming you can do more than you actually can. Disappointment. 

So, she asks, where’s the joy?  

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, right before I read this chapter in Feinberg’s book I listened to the sermon preached by one of our pastors Sunday. The Scripture was Psalm 102. If you haven’t read it, or aren’t familiar with it, it’s a lament. The New International Version has a brief lead-in: “A prayer of an afflicted man. When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.” 

What is the psalmist lamenting? Disappointment. Depression (or what sounds just like it). Listlessness. Purposelessness. Persecution by enemies. Feeling useless. “Withering away like grass.” 

Been there. Done that.  

We’ve all experienced these feelings and situations. All the neo-prosperity gospelites to the contrary, life is not a mansion, big Mercedes Benz, and a timeshare in Monaco. Life is hard. Problems happen. Loved ones get sick. You get sick. Jobs are lost. Dreams are postponed and then cancelled. People do awful things to you. You do awful things to people. 

Whatever happened to “and they all lived happily ever after?” 

Life is, well, hard. Bad things happen to good people, and all the time. Women and children are kidnapped by those who pride themselves on achieving new levels of vicious violence. The wicked prosper.  

The psalmist has an answer, one very similar to what Feinberg discovered. As much as we rebel against the idea, the fact is that life – this life – is not all about us. This life is always about a larger story.  

And the joy is in that larger story. 

Led by Jason Stasyzen and Sarah Salter, we’re reading Margaret Feinberg’s Fight Back with Joy. To see other posts on this week’s chapter, “The Biggest Myth About Joy,” please visit Sarah at LivingBetween the Lines.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.