On Joy and Gastro
Story by Rhianon Rae, photography by Kym van der Plas
What does it take to be joyful?
I pose this question to myself as I sit opposite my husband at our local café/playground. It is a beautiful spot, framed with gum trees and filled with casual weekend vibes. It’s a pleasant 30-odd degrees, the kids are playing, and I have a latte and the paper. It is a picture of the idyllic Saturday morning for our family.
Quite different from the scenario earlier in the week when I had endured a severe case of gastro overnight. As I lay in bed, hoping to get some relief, my four-year-old daughter came and informed me that Daddy had now been sick too. So as I was the better of the two of us, I hauled myself to the lounge room with the minimal aim of ensuring no children injured themselves. Inevitably, a few hours later, one of the children succumbed to the illness. Several loads of washing, much Glen 20 and Hydralite later, I collapsed into bed. What a contrast.
The impact of this bout of sickness was also a double whammy of disappointment. My daughter would miss out on the birthday party of one of her besties. Each day last week we counted down, six more sleeps, five,four ....and now no more. How my heart ached as she looked desperately into my eyes and asked if, by the morning,she was better, could she still go? Oh, the sadness when I had to gently tell her that no, we couldn’t risk passing this on to all the party guests. On top of this I had my own sadness - the concert that I had lined up babysitting for, I could no longer attend. How could I ask someone to look after my sick children, even if I was better in time? So, the idyllic Saturday morning was tinged with sorrows too.
Sorrows, yes. But such small sorrows.
As I sat there in the sunshine, I read an article about a girl named Maddie, and her parents who care for her. Maddie is 16 and has a severe form of autism. She can only communicate a few words, cannot attend to her basic needs, and can become violent to those that she loves. Her parents are on the edge of total exhaustion as the daughter they love needs their constant, vigilant attention. When were they last out for a nice evening together? I imagine it was more than 16 years ago.
Now, missing one concert seems pretty small fry, as does one day of gastro.
How helpful are such comparisons? I do think they give me a healthy reality check, that my circumstances are not so difficult and indeed I have a lot to be thankful for. Yet the baseline for joy cannot simply be looking over your shoulder and seeing that your life seems better than the neighbours’. You can always look over the other fence and find that those neighbours are going way better than you!
More than that, I am pushed back to my first question: what does it take to be joyful? Can there be joy in a life of self-sacrifice and sickness?
It seems to me there are many voices out there saying no to that question, or at least saying that you should pursue joy by forgoing self-sacrifice. Every season of MasterChef (a show I unashamedly love), there is a narrative of the mum who has given up lots of time and energy to look after the kids, and now is finally doing something for herself. In doing so, she finds new purpose, hope and meaning. Every time I hear this narrative, I want to throw something at my television, as the message that pursuing your ‘food dream’ is more fulfilling/valuable/meaningful than years of looking after your family, is played out again and again. Here is expressive individualism at its ‘best’: finding true meaning only when we can fully express and act on our own desires. Such a philosophy seems intrinsically against the idea of self-sacrifice. In this scenario what does such a philosophy say to me, a stay-at-home Mum?
Yet, self-sacrifice also abounds in many and varied ways in our world. In volunteer organisations set up to help the homeless and the sick, in the stories of people like Maddie’s parents, in friendships and in thousands of tiny acts of kindness. We celebrate people like Austin Appelbee, the teen who swam 4-kilometres in choppy seas to save his mother and siblings stuck out at sea. Long may such celebrations continue.
In the end, we are nothing without the concept of self-sacrifice. If you and I and everyone else are only ever in it for ourselves, what a miserable world we make. Ironically, there is no joy in that world.
In the Bible, joy is so often linked with other virtues, such as love. How interesting that ‘Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth’ (1 Cor 13:6). Love takes joy in things, but not superficial things; it delights in truth. If it does not delight in evil, I think it’s fair to say that love delights in goodness. The good and the true: this is what brings joy to the heart of a person filled with love.
The apostle Paul seems to delight most in two things: the LORD, and the people the LORD has given him to tell the gospel to. I’ve always been drawn to the book of Philippians because of the joy that radiates from the pages. Yet recently, I noticed a nuanced joy from Paul elsewhere. He says to the Corinthians that he is ‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.’ Sorrowful because his ministry situation is so hard, yet rejoicing in God and in the people God has given him to minister to.
What an intriguing combination: sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. I think there is something there that I can hold on to. When the next family sickness rolls around, and I am back doing the unglamorous work parents have done for millennia. When there is not much fun to be had, when there is good work to do but it is fraught with difficulty, and ‘joy’ seems like an impossible thing. In these times, what I need is an understanding of joy deep and rich enough to be able to say I am ‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing’. If I think that joy means the absence of sorrow and difficulty, then it is impossible to rejoice in those times. But if joy and sorrow can mingle together, then there is hope that a life of self-sacrifice is not a life without joy. Perhaps a life of self-sacrifice is the way to joy; the joy that comes from love. The joy that delights in goodness, truth, and ultimately in God the giver of all good things.
And I can delight in the smaller things too; the coffee, the sunshine, the small good gifts from God. Even MasterChef, as long as I never follow through and actually throw something at the TV!
If this story resonated with you, sign up to get honest stories in your inbox for free on Wednesdays from Christian women in Western Australia from March—November 👇🏻
Rhianon Rae—Regular Contributor
Rhianon is married to Sam and spends much of her time loving and looking after their four children. In God’s kindness, she first heard the gospel from her parents, and has since trained in Christian ministry with the UWA Christian Union and Trinity Theological College. In this season, she enjoys leading a Bible study, coffee dates with friends, watching cricket, and dreaming of the day she can play netball again.