2023/21. ANTICIPATORY JOY

This being the pivotal halfway point between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, I found myself ruminating during church this morning on what we know of the final days before the crucifixion and resurrection of the Savior Jesus Christ. I recalled this time last year when I was preparing a Relief Society lesson on the Holy Week. I remember thinking how sad Jesus must have been knowing what was to come, and being rather alone in that knowledge. His closest friends, his apostles, at least according to their writings, were not clued-in to the upcoming tragic turn of events. But Jesus knew what he would have to face, and what he would have to sacrifice to accomplish his purposes. That’s when I discovered, through the power of Google search, the concept of anticipatory grief. Jesus had to have had some level of sorrow, even knowing he would be resurrected, at what was to come between the Sermon on the Mount and the Mount of Transfiguration. 

We humans experience anticipatory grief all the time. I felt it when I was seventeen and knew I would be leaving home to attend college. Then again when I was 24 and Dave accepted a new job that included moving our young family from Pittsburgh to Utah, so far from David’s family. Anticipatory grief flowed from my eyes and dropped at my unconscious mother’s bedside, her breathing labored, her hands still warm but still. We watched her every breath those last long days, anticipating the loss, until she breathed no more. Grief seeps in and out of our lives like fog from the sea.

Today though, something in me (perhaps it was the hope of Spring in the crocuses that finally appeared beneath the rocks in Annie’s front yard), something reminded my soul that we also get to anticipate joy: Reunions of all sorts, fair weather after a long hard season, a safe arrival home. Christmas, and Easter, and all the other in-between holidays.  An upcoming vacation. We anticipate a child returning home after some sort of distant service, and the vision of it gets us through the rough spots of separation.  I remember well that forethought of rocking my babies getting me though the swollen ankles and heartburn nights of late pregnancy. We have, in probably excessive measure, a goodly share of anticipatory joy available to us. Hope springs eternal.

On the drive home from church, I got to thinking of particular anticipatory joy, the short-term variety; the leftover apple pie waiting on the kitchen counter. The removal of constraining clothing, followed by the soft angelic flow of Sunday frock fabric floating down over my shoulders. And then, as if these were not enough pleasure to lift any weary heart, the prospect of a Sunday nap sent me over the edge and I giggled aloud in the car.

There was a young family seated in front of us in church today. We were visiting another ward for a friend’s mission farewell, so I did not know them. The young father was holding his small son on his lap. The boy looked over his dad’s shoulder and back to us, smiling. At one point he took his father’s head in his hands, demanding his attention, and just stared at him. It was more of a gaze, I suppose, where eye meets eye and is so comfortable no other motion or words are necessary. Eventually the young father tipped his head to the side and buried his lips into the neck of his toddler, kissing him over and over. I got to thinking how rare such an interchange is among mature people. We are so used to getting from point A to point B we forget to bask in the pregnant pauses. I imagined myself, seeing as I was in the mode of holy thought, cupping the face of my God in my pudgy infant fingers. I imagined Him willingly looking, without any expectation, straight into my eyes. Then, seeing as I was in the mode of anticipatory joy, I imagined God himself bending his powerful neck and burying his face in the folds of my chin. Holy kisses.

Anticipatory joy!

And I thought, right then and there, to thank the Lord for allowing my divinely driven spirit the pleasure of anticipating, every Sunday morning, the prospect of Sunday afternoon naps. The best rest of the week. Like, by command, I am given permission, after taking the holy Sacrament, to lay my head on His shoulder, my heart beating right against his, and let myself drift into his rest.