Delight

In some ways I feel like I’ve been in a low-grade bad mood since last March, and winter isn’t helping. Maybe I’m not the only one? Of course I relish moments of joy and lightheartedness here and there every week. But even my children have noticed that I don’t smile or laugh as easily lately. If I was an intense person before the pandemic, this past year has only served to make me double-down in my seriousness. There are, after all, plenty of matters—local and global—to fret about and even grieve over these days.

But I don’t like the thought of being characterized by seriousness or melancholy. And I certainly don’t want my own daughters to think I’m incapable of having fun or enjoying them and the things going on around me. So I’ve been pondering small ways I can change both the state of my heart and their perception of it.

I read last week that delight and awe naturally and even scientifically counter cynicism and open us up to connection. In her Get Out of Your Head study, Jennie Allen says, “Delight is a weapon that tears down our walls and allows hope and worship to flood in.” It’s slow, hard work to lighten our own hearts, but I’m starting to take notice of what brings me and the people around me delight.

After years of listening to them beg for a backyard trampoline, this Christmas we gifted the girls with one. If you had asked me even a year ago if I would ever give into that request I would have said a certain no. I think they’re altogether dangerous, especially when two of my kids are acrobatic risk-takers. The one and only broken bone of my parenting career (so far) involved a small indoor trampoline. So all I can say about my change of heart is this: the pandemic made me do it. I caved, and we set one up in the backyard. (I use the term “we” loosely here. If you know my husband you can ask him how long it took for assembly and how helpful I was during the whole process).

But this is what I see happening on that very dangerous apparatus. A letting go. A joyful abandonment of the day’s worries for a few minutes of pure enjoyment. Real laughter. High-pitched squeals.

I see delight.

Inside the four walls of our house, these sisters find plenty of reasons to fuss and fight with each other. But when they get on the trampoline and start flying through the air, I can take pictures without even asking for a smile. (Don’t get me wrong, they’re still capable of arguing on it, but it happens less often).

I’ve been on the trampoline myself a couple of times since we set it up. And though bouncing around on one feels vastly different when you’re 43 than when you’re 13, I still feel that sense of exhilaration being on it. It’s freeing to be momentarily out of control.

The trampoline reminds me of what I feel like when I go snow-skiing. We don’t go often, but something in my typically uptight nature appreciates the way I have to release control at the top of the mountain in order to get down the mountain without a crash or injury. I like how the wind feels on my face and the swishing sound the skis make as they cut back and forth on the snow. For those few minutes when I’m zig-zagging from the top to the bottom, I feel a sense of delight in the white snow, the high speeds, and the wonder of being alive.

But on a regular day in mid-winter back home, I forget what delight and awe look like and feel like. I slip into an ordinary unawareness of beauty.

I’m a Christian, but I love learning from the rich history of the Jewish faith. There is a Hebrew Sabbath Prayer that reads:

“Days pass, the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles.
Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing.
Let there be moments in which your presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk.”

This feels true. We’re still walking “sightless among miracles” even in what has been a long, hard year. And there is delight and awe to be found and savored all around us if we can lift up our heads and our hearts to see it.

Maybe I don’t even have to look further than my own backyard to start.