A Loved Child of my Father

Over the last few weeks I’ve taken to wearing a piece of jewellery given to me by my father when I was around 9 years old.

This solid pewter pendant has lain in the bottom of my jewellery box as a mostly overlooked momento of childhood.

As you can see: it’s a smiley face.

Why am I choosing to wear a ‘smiley face’ when the world is in such a challenging position? When houses are being bombed, children are dying and people go hungry. Closer to home I have a dear friends who have suffered or are suffering unimaginable pain.

Am I being trite?

I hope not.

I have been slowly finding something out about myself, about who I am. It began with a week end away many years ago, a Christian retreat weekend which invited us to consider our ‘calling’. I expected to be come out with a task (teacher/leader/missionary) but to my great surprise the weekend focussed on something much deeper: what essential quality has God put in you to bless the world?

And mine turned out to be ‘JOY’.

It has taken me many years to fully own this quality in myself. To realise that it IS the deepest essence of who I am. I am motivated by joy. If if things are fun, I’m all in! You might think that’s true for everyone but I assure you it isn’t. I am married to someone for whom a day of chores well done genuinely pleases him. But a life of well done chores just done cut it for me, I really have zip motivation to do tasks or chores which feel tedious. (This is the downside of my personality type and the reason I’m very grateful for the husband God gave me, without him nothing ‘important’ would get done!).

By wearing this pendant I’m owning who I deeply am. And because the world is such a challenging place I have come to think of it as ‘Defiant Joy’.

As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety over the years, it also feels very counterintuitive to say my essential inner quality is ‘joy’. It feels safer to be an Eeyore and keep my inner Tigger chained down, my expectations low and my outlook calm.

But perhaps that’s been the problem? If you are a person who needs to dance in the kitchen… you need to dance in your kitchen, no matter how messy it is.

Anyway, when just a few weeks ago the lovely Sister Sharon (my spiritual director and friend) said she thought I was a 7 on the Enneagram – a personality type whose essential inner calling is to joy, it all just clicked into place. And I saw the reason I struggle with difficult or tedious tasks but I also saw how joy makes me ‘fly’. And I realised I’m not just being ‘flighty’. I actually need regular ‘joy snacks’ every day. A ‘joy snack’ is simply noting a moment of something that brings me joy and savouring it.

A final note on the pendant: when I dug it out and cleaned it up, I found ‘Denmark’ stamped on the back. I’d never noticed that before and as I now have a Dane of my own, my lovely daughter in law helped me track it down. Apparently it’s a Jorgen Jensen designer piece. How on earth did my Dad came across a piece of jewellery of Danish origin? Something about it must have appealed to him. I’d like to think that maybe he also saw that ‘something in me’, that gift of joy.

Anyway – this is now a collectible piece of 70s chic but I’m not giving mine away.

It says to me ‘I am the very much loved child of my Father (both my earthly and Heavenly Father). I can face the world with defiant joy.