Joy

At my lowest point, it was the need to do justice to these children that pulled me out and transformed me. For the justice due to every human being is more than just meeting the lowest basic needs for sustaining life. I could not be just to my children by giving them only what they need to survive. Justice isn’t satisfied by showering them with all of the comforts and indulgences of the world, either, were I capable of it.

Justice to these people – justice for every person – is not satisfied by duty, diligently checking off all of the boxes of requirements for being a ‘good’ parent, ‘good’ wife, ‘good’ friend, ‘good’ daughter. Going through the motions is the beginning of justice-the beginning of most good things, to be honest, and I’m not trying to knock it. I’ve been in that place where all I could do was move onward towards hard, unyielding, unattractive duty.

But that still falls short of the just end of every man and woman. We were not created to exist in isolation, to live in a state of mutual contract, to be given our scant and grudging dues and no more. We were not created for toleration, for distant admiration, for possession, or mutual use. We were not even created for the knee jerk unthinking love so easy to fall into as a parent, when we work and even suffer in our desire to see them happy, well, and fulfilled, but our love in the end seems almost impersonally disconnected from the reality of our children’s identities.

What is the justice due to each human being? The need that, unfulfilled, will poison and sap the good from all other needs and appetites, no matter how plentifully met?

We were created for joy.

God made man, and He saw that we are good. God doesn’t need anything from us – we cannot fulfill He Who Is. None of our works add an iota to God’s perfection. We are, only because it is Good that we are. We are, because God rejoices in being; He rejoices in us. And each of us, objects of joy, are surrounded by a creation, and other people, who also exist as objects and subjects of joy.

We hunger to be rejoiced in, to see that our very existence is a good to those we love.

My children need a place to belong, an identity, safety, security, and room to grow into themselves. These are things they need, to grow and move forward.

What they deserve, in addition to all of those things, is to be a cause and an object of joy.

When we moved to Ontario, a dear friend of mine cautioned me to remember that my children are good “for their own sake.”  They are not good merely for what they symbolize, for what they mean to me, for how they make me feel, for the role they play in our family, for their talents, or for any of the other many ways they exist as a good in my life. They are good, in themselves, individually, in a very specific, personal sense. Their existence IS the good that justifies itself. They are unique, unrepeatable, incommunicable, irreplaceable, invaluable, beyond all measure. The only just response to that amazing fact of existence is joy.

That is what justice requires we give to our children.

That is what justice requires we give to one another.