Ode to joy

"The fields that we farmed are not there now," said Steve Scott, a farmer in Unicoi County. He's my uncle. He, my dad, their dad, and many others in my family have farmed Unicoi, Washington, Greene, and Hamblen counties all of their lives. And they've never seen so much destroyed.

He was talking about farms down along State Route 107, or "down on the river" as we know it.

Today, I'm writing about joy. Which seems irresponsible, tone deaf, or just silly in the face of what we have: people missing, lives pitched into the mud, and beyond the tragedies of the hurricane, every day we lose more people, mothers lose sons to cancer, children lose fathers to porn, alcohol, and ambition; we fight each other over the "soul" of our country without really being able to say what that even is.

In his memoir Surprised By Joy, C.S. Lewis said: "All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still 'about to be.'"

Lewis defined joy like a longing for home when you've been gone for a long time: the feeling of wanting to be there is better than the being there. And I think he is right.

So, maybe the most responsible thing I can do today is remember.

I remember my wife walking down the aisle at our wedding. I didn't remember it at first if that makes any sense. The moment was so overwhelming, with so many things to try to take in, that I was somewhere behind my eyeballs trying to catch up. Then I was crying, and I had no clue why.

Two days later, we were sitting together on Sullivan's Island. I love the beach at night. The sand is cool on your feet, the moon bobbing on the waves, and the stars extend down to the horizon line where they meet the sea while their reflections dance about with the bobbing moon.

But I saw none of that.

I was on the edge of an anxiety attack. I was on my honeymoon with a woman I loved, and I was convinced in the depth of my being that someday I would do something that would crush her. I knew how my eyes that day on the beach had darted where they shouldn't, I knew my thoughts when we walked passed the bar where the night was beginning to promise all sorts of debauchery to the beautiful people inside, and I knew my past and all that I had done.

I was stuck with the monster in my mind as we left dinner and drove out onto the island. We parked the car on a street off the ocean, stole through the live oaks and the brush, and emerged into the sound of the waves tapping the beach. Just above us was the Sullivan's Island lighthouse. I'd been coming to Charleston since I was a kid and loved to look out over the marshes at night as we drove across the Connector Bridge and see the beam of it whipping its comfort to the ships far out at sea.

We sat there for a moment, my wife smiling and me quiet.

"Do you want to pray for our marriage?" I asked. It sounds mega spiritual, in truth it was desperate.

"Sure," she said.

I didn't know what to say. In college, a campus minister taught me a prayer formula where you start by adoring God.

I didn't want to do that but was ready to try anything.

I looked up at the stars and said something ineloquent like, "God, this is beautiful."

Behind my eyes, the image of my wife walking down the aisle was there. It wasn’t a memory, I could see it as I can see my computer in front of me now.

I could see her Father's blazer, I could the stable up on the hill silhouetted in the afternoon sun, I could see her white dress that she put on just for me, and hear the singer switch from a Rich Mullins song (chosen by me) to "This is My Father's World" (chosen by her).

This is my Father's world,

And to my listening ears

All nature sings, and round me rings

The music of the spheres.

This is my Father's world:

I rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas--

His hand the wonders wrought.

Something in me burst open, I heard the words like they were with us, and I cried on her shoulder. We sat there for 30 more minutes, and I didn't say another word.

Joy: It fears no sorrow and needs no words.

But I still tried because I needed reminding.