WHEN JOY COMES AND GOES
Note: Adam Thomason wrote and performed the following spoken word poem at Gretchen’s Celebration of Life on January 12 2024.
When joy comes
What you are lifting becomes light as her presence brings levity.
Confusion that crowds the corners of one’s cluttered teenage room becomes pristinely clear.
Her smile, with more gleam than the purest linen cleanses your soul from earth’s stains.
Her embrace cocoons you in warmth making comfort wait for its turn.
Her words are wise, with smiling eyes, or smeyes ☺️
When joy comes there are no road trips she won’t take, food she won’t bake, conversation to lofty or pain worth enduring too costly.
There is no high or low, no looking back, joy’s presence pulls you forward as…
She makes worry whisper and hurry halts to a hush…
She is the prize, the one who counted Christ costs and followed him, the prestige, the podcast, the conversation, the award, the meal, the guest who’s coming to dinner, the only friend that matters, love that lessens life’s sting, the center of the party that refuses to be seen, an embrace that closes one’s lonely gap, face you want staring back at you, eyes that only matter to see you…filling the void,
she is the bucket list, the mountain top, the best hand hold, a leader among leaders, best listening ear that forever clears her schedule, you are worth her time,
she’s the Moscow mule, the symphony, the score, the brand, the deal, the stocking stuffer that knows you better than yourself…
When joy comes, she is one of one, there are no replacements, only knock offs…
So…
When joy goes her presence pauses life’s purposed progress.
Chaos pursues the soul with a luster unwanted and uninvited.
One’s lungs are hampered. Colors once vibrant, whimper & sunset
Shimmer and gleam gets shrouded by a disorganized compass of, what now?
When joy goes, joy goes
You expect her to return through life’s revolving door, but death turns that door into a one way…she was the first of her kind and joy is gone..
When joy goes, silence darkens understanding with deafening confusion, your language is scrambled, words come but communication is inadequate, inaccessible, incongruent to the normal of joy’s flourishing and nourishment.
When joy goes “what now?!? forgets to be a question, it makes its residence in the rooms and spaces joy once faithfully and fruitfully occupied.”
But joy’s presence, essence, gumption, legacy, investment, wasn’t bound up in her alone for she wouldn’t be fully joy if it were, Joy, all along sought to deposit herself in those she loved. Joy was intentional.
The array that made joy shine and loved are the treasures that joy wants you to keep, joy was others centered so that means she gave you something that only can grow and compound its beauty, rise like leaven in the perfect loaf of bread if you live.
Joy saw you as the safety box with one key, the account worth putting precious artifacts in to be held, so when her time came, she knew what you’d find in you & under that bed. What she left behind becomes a great scavenger hunt of threaded experiences and impressions that refuses to lose their meaning.
Though a mystery, an enigma, puzzle with no answer but yet a felt conclusion…
It’s what the disciples must have felt when Christ ascended WE NEED YOU HERE!!!
Though a mystery, of how joy, pain, legacy, void, and bloom can occupy the same space fighting to steer the car of life’s direction, when joy comes it also joy goes, but somehow in us all Gretchen remains.
