Surprised by Joy

On my daughter’s twenty-eighth birthday, I share a reflection on joy I wrote to my children several months ago.

Thanks to Liza Dawson’s Relief Society lesson, I have been thinking of the theme of joy the past few days, especially in relation to my children.  And when I think of Chrissy, I think of the phrase “Surprised by Joy.” 

It is both the title of a C.S. Lewis book, describing his journey to Christianity as well as a Wordsworth’s poem, “Surprised by Joy—Impatient as the Wind.” I think most often of C.S. Lewis when the phrase comes to mind.  His allusion to the Wordsworth poem shares only the serendipitous nature of joy. Lewis is surprised by the joys of a world created by a god he has embraced. Joy catches Wordsworth off guard. In fact, he is so surprised by some unnamed joy that he turns to share it with his daughter, before guiltily taking a step back in grief, remembering that he cannot share with his beloved daughter Catherine, who is deceased. But I don’t wonder that he is perhaps also surprised that in the midst of he grief that he can still feel joy. It is one of those after the fact reflections one has in grief. One is so consumed in one's grief that one is surprised to discover that it is still possible to experience joy.

I, too, was surprised by joy. My moment came not out of grief or searching, but came courtesy of Chrissy twenty-eight years ago.

First, some explanation of my attitudes toward motherhood before Chrissy was born. 

I came of age during the women's movement of the 1970s. Women burned their bras and demanded equal pay (which in many cases, we still don't completely have). When I came home from my internship in Washington, D.C., I proudly wore a t-shirt I had purchased from a vendor on the Mall. It was emblazoned with a common mantra of the era: "A Woman's Place is in the House . . . and in the Senate." I was and am a feminist (a term that is so continually redefined that it has little meaning), a fact that disconcerted my mother, who was, in fact, also a bit of a trailblazer in her own right. (She had served a mission at 19, completed her master's degree at the University of Chicago, and worked for a world-renowned psychologist in an era when fewer women even began college.)

Needless to say, I was one who felt women deserved every right. (Title IX was issued the year before I began high school and I was on the first women's swimming at Ogden High School, which, incidentally did much better than the men's team.) I remember a discussion I had with a young man during my first few weeks at BYU.  Education, not marriage, I told him, was my agenda at BYU, and being the self-righteous returned missionary that he was, he told me my eternal salvation was in jeopardy. (Like a fool, I made the mistake of bad-mouthing this fine fellow at great length in my apartment that night and in the weeks that followed. It was made a bit uncomfortable when my roommate  began dating him.) So my mother breathed a sigh of relief when I married your father. She knew the value of family life.

Your father and I were at BYU for eight months after we married until we went to Stanford. As I wandered across the BYU campus, I frequently saw pregnant women, who I pitied. In my mind each and every one of them had no goals or ambition. Each had sold out. I remember scowling at a young mother who was reading books to her child in my usual study spot on the fifth floor of the Harold B. Lee Library. It was a university library after all. What place did children have there? I did not recognize the broad disconnect in my life: I adored and worshiped my own mother, but I found motherhood among my peers distasteful.

Thus, it was a true leap of faith, nearly two and a half years into our marriage, when I became pregnant. I did not especially want to be a mother. But I felt a nagging obligation. And the in-utero Chrissy did not help matters much. The morning sickness she induced was constant. I was miserable. And I could only think about how miserable I was. My neighbor from Taiwan informed me that in Mandarin morning sickness was translated as "Happy sick." I was not at all happy.

We were still poor students, so when I went home during the summer break, my mother and I went shopping for maternity clothes. (Thank you Mom.) As I tried on dresses, I was complaining, as usual. Fed up, me mother looked at me and sternly said, "I honestly don't know why you bothered getting pregnant. You have nothing good to say about it." And that was the truth.

In my second trimester, the grumblings about pregnancy subsided with my morning sickness. However, I only shifted the source of my complaints. I began complaining about my impending motherhood. I did not know how in the world I would birth this baby. (It was a real shock to take a tour of the maternity ward a week before I had Chrissy. I saw a door fly open, a nurse run out, urgently calling "She's dilated to 10," and a woman screaming, "Get this baby out of me." I really wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into.) I did not know how I would ever survive all the sleepless nights. I made fatalistic jokes about it all, but I really wondered about how this shift to motherhood was going to happen to someone whose raging hormones had failed to engage the maternal instinct.

And then it happened. It happened so naturally that I did not even notice that it had happened. I had a smooth, natural childbirth with Chrissy. She was a delightful, even-tempered baby. And we became a happy, happy little family.

Only a few months after her birth did I recognize that I had been surprised by joy. During pregnancy, I had gone to a prenatal fitness class. We exercised two to three times a week in a gym and then hit a swimming pool on Saturdays. (I want you to know that I swam 20 laps a few days before Chrissy was born.) A few months after Chrissy's birth, I rejoined the group in the swimming pool. It was fun to be with my friends and actually be the "experienced" one, telling everyone else just what it was like. After our session in the pool, I was in the shower with someone, giving my oh-so-experienced advice.

"Was there anything that surprised you?" my friend asked.

And that was my moment, the moment when I first recognized my joy.

"No one prepared me for the joy,” I replied. “I had heard about ineffective epidurals, painful episiotomies, cracked nipples, sleepless nights, and ceaseless crying. But I had never heard about the joy."

No one prepared me for the joy. Or rather, I, the cynical feminist, had never listened. I was truly and endearingly surprised by joy.

Those first few weeks and months were truly halcyon. Waking up every day to a delightful baby. Watching her every move. It was joyful. What I would have missed had I not taken that leap of faith into motherhood.

And as it is my daughter’s birthday, I have a message to her two brothers. You should be very, very thankful to your sister Chrissy. Be thankful that she surprised me by joy. For, as I have often said, if Nathan had been my first child, he would have been an only child. Let's just say, those first few months with Nathan were a bit of adjustment. Praise be to my sweet daughter Chrissy.