Hello, Slump

Here I am in the throes of a slump with an intense desire to do the work.

This is the same place I keep finding myself time and time again but this time I beg it to be different. I beg it to break me down into pieces and place me back together in a new imperfectly unique form.

This time, I am asking a lot from the slump. I would like it to reconnect me with a type of joy I haven’t known for a while. The joy I desire is steady. It is void of the valleys and peaks I have grown to know well. I want a peaceful joy, one that I can know every single day.

I want a joy that is visible in my eyes when I talk to my mom or my best friend.

I want a joy that sits with me when I have coffee in the morning.

Sure, I am very familiar with joy but my joy is a little mysterious. It’s like those friends I have that come and go. When they’re around it’s great, but when I haven’t chatted with them for a while I forget what draws me to them. And then after an extended absence, I quit desiring their company completely.

I am aware of the places my joy hangs out but our paths don’t always cross. Sometimes I like to make it complicated. I have traveled to remote corners of the world in search of my joy. I have even quit jobs and drained my savings account in its pursuit.

But without fail, when I think joy has completely forsaken me, I find it in the most ordinary of places.

Joy lies in wait on phone calls with the people I love, in new pieces of art and spectacular sunsets over my grandparent's farmhouse. It nestles itself in the short hairs on my horse's nose and the petals of my flowers in the spring.

Joy almost always hangs out at my parent’s kitchen table around dinner time.

Slump, perhaps your purpose is to drive me to these things. You are forcing me to hang on to them for dear life in hopes that despair won’t swallow me up.

What if despair wasn’t the final product of this slump? What if I could allow joy in and be the one to swallow it up?