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“Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” —Psalm 30:5
There comes a moment in grief—not in the beginning, not even in the middle—but sometime later, in the quiet folds of year three, when you find yourself laughing. And not just politely. Not to put others at ease. But fully, unexpectedly—like joy has snuck in the back door of your life and surprised you with something you thought had left forever.
And then comes the flicker of guilt.
As if joy is a betrayal.
As if smiling means you’ve forgotten.
As if breathing freely means you’ve somehow closed the chapter on love, on memory, on loss.
But what if that’s not true?
What if the joy returning is not a betrayal, but a visitation?
Something holy. Borrowed from heaven.
Something earned by endurance.
Joy Returns in Fragments
In year one, everything hurts. In year two, you’re still trying to make sense of the rubble. But in year three, something else begins: the slow work of restoration.
Not everything is rebuilt.
Not everything returns.
But the light shifts.
You notice a flower blooming outside your window and feel moved.
A stranger's kindness makes you tear up in gratitude.
You find yourself humming to a song you used to love—and don’t turn it off this time.
These are fragments. Glimpses. Not declarations of healing, but evidence that your soul is beginning to expand again.
Joy No Longer Feels Like Betrayal
Grief teaches you that joy and sorrow are not enemies—they are companions. And once you’ve known great sorrow, you begin to realize:
Joy is not the absence of grief.
It is what returns after you’ve made space for both.
Jesus Himself understood this. In John 16:20–22, He tells His disciples:
“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy... Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.”
Notice that He doesn’t say the grief disappears.
He says it turns. It transforms.
The Greek word for "turn" here implies a change in nature—not replacement, but reformation.
And that is what happens in year three.
Joy no longer announces itself loudly. It whispers.
It tiptoes in through moments of softness and familiarity.
Joy That Is Borrowed from Heaven
Psalm 126:5–6 says:
“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.
He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”
This is not the joy of the unbroken.
This is the joy of the returning, the surviving, the one who stayed faithful through loss.
It’s the joy of someone who has buried something sacred and still kept walking.
It’s not giddy. It’s not loud.
But it is deep. Anchored. And holy.
This is the kind of joy that costs something.
And because of that, it means more when it arrives.
A Joy You Don’t Have to Justify
In grief, joy becomes gentler. You stop chasing it. You stop staging it. You let it come when it wants to—and you let it go when it doesn’t.
And that is its holiness.
Because in doing so, you begin to trust God’s timing again.
You begin to trust your heart again.
Nehemiah 8:10 says, “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
But in year three, you understand that line differently.
Joy is not your strength because you feel it all the time—
Joy is your strength because it finds you even when you’re not looking.
And when it does?
You let it rest on you like sunlight.
You let it visit without guilt.
You receive it as a promise that sorrow did not destroy you—
It refined you.
Final Reflection
If you are in year three and finding yourself smiling more, laughing softly, or sitting in a moment of beauty without that immediate pang of loss—don’t question it.
Don’t shame it.
Don’t silence it.
Let it come.
Let it stay.
Let it whisper: “You are still alive. You are still becoming.”
Because this joy?
It’s not a betrayal.
It’s resurrection in disguise.
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