Joy Like Swords

limping into the new year (literally)

It’s the first week of 2025. I’m showing up to write like it’s my job (it is my job, but it’s easy to believe otherwise when you’re a self-employed writer). 

I woke up to a powdered sugar dusting of snow resting on the grass blades in our yard. Our old house is cold. Nothing a pair of wool socks and a thick sweater can’t fix. My belly grumbles, hungry and empty. My brain grumbles, hungry to write and empty of words to put on the page. Oh well, showing up for work even though you don’t feel like it is part of life—one we’re privileged to experience. 

You know how some people say they’re “limping into the new year”? I injured my back during a workout session a week ago and I—quite literally—have been limping into 2025. It’s ok. You can laugh. I’ve been working out consistently since October. I feel stronger. I weigh exactly the same as when I started. Being able to workout to the point of injuring one’s back is also a privilege. 

I appreciate the sun so much more in winter. I become starved for it under the insistently grey skies we have where I live. I hung a $15 disco ball in my living room to coax it to stay around longer. I take pictures of it pooling in the sink and bathing my houseplants. I check the forecast like an anxious lover checks the mailbox for an overseas note. You’ll find me gobbling sunlight up with both hands when it finally slips out, amber-gold and ripe, from the drab canopy at the end of the day. Someday I’ll have to thank God in-person for giving us our own star. That was a really good idea. 

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We had a quiet holiday season and it was exactly what we needed. No traveling, a string of slow days at home. A day trip to a creaky-floored bookshop next to a pottery studio. So many Christmas movies. Lots of biscuits and gravy and coconut cake and waffle iron cinnamon rolls. 

Right as the new year was christened, sickness struck our house. In between washing (and rewashing) bedding while keeping one child quarantined and eyeing the Christmas decor that we haven’t had time or energy to take down, I’m trying to do the work of being myself. 

This work takes the form of picture-journaling¹ with phone polaroids and washi tape. This work also looks like taking frigid walks with my dog and eating more protein + roasted vegetables. This work also looks like sitting down to write and not giving up until 1,000 words are on the page. What does the work of being yourself look like for you?

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I’m reading two books. One is a re-read² I haven’t visited since before I was married. The other was written by my friend Tabitha about the universal human wound of rejection and how God finds us when no matter how deeply we are hurt by it. I know, just from the first chapter that it’s a book I need in my hands as I start the new year.

Tabitha has been part of a writing mastermind with me and I’ve had the gift of watching her wrestle this book into the world. Her intentionality, humility and pure grit has been amazing to witness. I know whoever picks up this book and sits with the good work she invites them to do in its pages will be blessed.  You can preorder it here!

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Someone on TikTok asked me if I believed there was forgiveness for the last living son of Fëanor (Maglor) at the end of The Silmarillion. I didn’t have to think too hard about it. Of course there’s the possibility of redemption for this character. The sister-themes of Pity and Mercy leading to redemption run strong within Tolkien’s legendarium. And, despite my own wounds that have left me jaded and hollow at times, I still believe redemption runs strong in the real world too. 

On Instagram, Kelly from @themiddlepage asked if there was a theme/aspect of Tolkien that particularly resonates with me and this was my answer:  

Yes, the theme of existing in the bitter and the joyous simultaneously while trusting for redemption to come resonates with me. We see it a few times but notably in The Ainulindalë when Morgoth attempts his discord and Ilúvatar says:

"Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined."

And again in Part Four of Morgoth's Ring in the conversation between Finrod (Galadriel’s brother) and Andreth (a human woman):

'’ What is hope?' she said. ‘An expectation of good, which though uncertain, has some foundation in what is known? Then we have none.'

‘That is one thing that Men call "hope", said Finrod. 'Amdir’ we call it, "looking up". But there is another which is founded deeper. ‘Estel’ we call it, that is "trust". It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves. This is the last foundation of ‘Estel’, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs the issue must be for His Children's joy. ‘Amdir’  you have not, you say. Does no Estel at all abide?'

And the final passage that comes to mind (for now, I know there are others) is the scene in The Fields of Cormallen after the defeat of Sauron where Frodo and Sam are being honored before everyone and the minstrel breaks out in song:

“And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness."

It’s Tolkien's acknowledgment that sometimes life wounds us very deeply but it doesn't mean there isn't beauty "forever beyond its reach". He writes about joy and suffering without letting one overshadow the other. That tension resonates with me deeply.

Living in the tension that Tolkien so poetically describes has been a visceral part of my life for a few years now. Dreams keep slipping through my hands, landing in the dirt and I’m forced to bury them. People who should be my close confidants and safe places have irreparably damaged whatever form of a relationship we had in years prior.  

And yet.

Sugar-snow is dusting the ground and shimmering in the light of our planet’s star. I’ve got all the fixin’s for proper buttermilk biscuits and sawmill gravy in my kitchen. My body is actively working to heal itself even while I rest. I can sit in my office and create and write and bear witness to the brutal bittersweetness of a life being lived. Estel indeed. 

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It’s the first week of 2025, a fresh year is unfurling your palms. How will you hold it? How will you tend it? How will you let it tend you? 

All we can do is keep showing up to the good work—beautifully unique to each of us—that we’re privileged to have. This is how the world keeps turning into the new graces given each day. This is how we pick up “joy like swords” and keep fighting the good fight.

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Thanks for reading this free post from The Redemptive. If you’d like more words from my crooked house in the heart of Wendell Berry country where I sit with themes of redemption in a broken world, you’re welcome to subscribe anytime. Either way, I’m glad you’re here.

1. Picture journaling has been such a fun, life-giving creative project that I want to do a whole post on it. Anyone interested? If you’re a writer-in-your-head-a lot type of person, the act of making your work tangible can be so beneficial!

2. I’m a MAJOR re-reader. I’ve heard people say they never re-read books and it always baffles me. I find that when I go back re-read a book after some time has passed, its a whole new experience because I’ve changed so much since the first time I picked up the book. Does that make sense? Are you Team Re-read or no?