I have a hard time waking up in the mornings. I don’t think I’ve gotten a really good night’s sleep since I was in high school, and I take a while to roll out of bed and start my day. I stumble, bleary-eyed, with a headache from the lack of caffeine in my system, to the office so I can make myself a cup of tea and gradually wake up.
I was completing this daily routine of mine a few weeks ago, when I decided to walk through the church on my way to the office, instead of going around through the side gate. Usually there are at least one or two people in the pews in the morning, bowing their heads in silent prayer, and they’re usually by themselves.
This particular morning, however, there was a young couple in the front pew, holding on to an infant and a toddler. I could hear the shrieks of the toddler as soon as I went through the door, and I hate to admit that my first emotion was annoyance. My head hurt, and there was a child screaming in a place where I had anticipated silence.
But as I got closer, I saw that the little boy was running up the steps towards the altar, his arms out, laughing in delight as his exasperated mother tried to chase him down while still being reverent. He made it all the way up to the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue before she grabbed him and pulled him back to sit down at her side.
It made me smile, because he was running up to the altar with such unabashed joy. I thought about it a lot that day; it’s fairly rare to see a family in the church so early in the morning, and it put me in a much better mood than I had been when I first entered. I remember thinking that I wish that my first move in the morning was to throw myself at the feet of Jesus instead of traipsing groggily to the kitchen to put on the kettle.
I’ve found myself holding onto pockets of joy like this recently. I’ve been planting flowers in our garden and going on walks on sunny days. Those are happening more and more frequently as we get further into Spring. Daffodils are popping up and blooming everywhere I turn. I see a lot of Dublin residents doing the same. They hang out in groups by the water and spread picnic blankets out in St. Stephen’s Green, and I know they’re holding onto pockets of joy like I am.
The end of Lent is approaching, and Spring is already here. Like the toddler that flung himself before the feet of Jesus, I’ve decided to lean into the small (but still substantial) moments of life that remind me of these things. There are so many of these little pockets of joy, and it’s time that I start noticing them.
