STEALING JOY

because isn’t laughter its own form of prayer?

i’ve been sick for the past ~10 days. not like SICK sick, but like sinus congestion, sore throat, headache-y, tired. and Z’s night terrors have been bad again. and the combo of prolonged low sleep and medium physical discomfort have had me feeling a little sorry for myself. low, blue, bummed—you know, that thing where your brain readily offers up all the reasons why your life is so hard (maybe even so much harder than everyone else’s).

but yesterday after dinner Z and i went to retrieve our nightly popsicles from the basement (our freezer lives in the basement) and as he bounded back up the stairs he yelled, “we can eat our popsicles out on the porch, B!”

and we did. sitting side by side on the hand-me-down porch bench from my mom—the one she gave us last summer as a housewarming gift.

and we sat as sweet milk melted on our tongues and watched the sky and talked about nothing and heard the world move around us.

and i thought about how the other day in the car Z was so overcome by the shape of this certain cloud but couldn’t quite find the words to tell me which one he meant and just kept demanding B look, look at that one! no that one, look how that one is different. and how proud and happy and amazed i was to get to witness him seeing and noticing and naming this world we all belong to.

i got a little heartbroken recently, and i cried a lot. like a lot, in a way i haven’t in a long time and it made me think about this post from

Andrea Gibson

where they quoted one their poems: let your heart break so your spirit doesn’t. in the post they go on to talk about how one of their main spiritual practices right now is making fun of their own spiritual practices. which like, same. and that reminded me of this other line i love (from the Big Book): we are not a glum lot, we absolutely insist on enjoying life.

we absolutely insist on enjoying life.

i want to insist on enjoying life. i want to insist on stealing moments of joy wherever and however i can. insist on laughing through the hard and the messy and the heartbreak, because what else should we be doing? and isn’t laughter its own form of prayer?

so anyway, in service of trying to feel less sorry for myself about having a cold, here are some ways i’ve been stealing joy recently:

• listening to songs that make me smile and want to dance—i have a playlist called “get glad” that is made up of only these songs, and i listen to it a lot

• eating popsicles and Oreos and potato chips

• saying yes to whatever silly thing Z happens to want just to see him smile

• dancing alone in my living room

• letting myself be impulsive or silly or in Z’s words “a little bit wild, but not too too wild”

hope you all find ways to steal some joy today too.

if you do, feel free to share :)

XOXO

billie