A reflection from Kate Appleton 2025

There is a difference between happiness and joy.
Most of us know happiness as a spark or a burst of lightness that lifts us momentarily. But joy, I’ve found, doesn’t rise in the same way. Joy moves slowly. It waits beneath the surface. It ripens in the dark.

This reflection emerged after noticing how easily we chase happiness, and how seldom we rest in the deeper presence of joy. I offer these words to remind us of what abides, even when we forget.

Joy: A Quiet Returning

Joy holds a different place in us.

Happiness flutters across the surface,
a bubbling giggle, a crinkled eye,
a belly that rises like bread in the oven.
It is the breeze that tousles your hair,
the sudden warmth of sun on skin
after weeks of gray.

But joy,
joy is something else entirely.

It arrives like the first silence
after the storm has passed,
when the world is washed and listening.
I feel it in my bones,
not loud, not brash,
but old, like stone that remembers fire
and the slow cool of becoming.

Joy lives in the spaces
between sorrow and love,
between letting go and being found.
It is the breath that follows a sob,
the stillness behind the eyes
where tears once pooled
and now soften the light.

It does not shout for attention
it beckons.

To sit.
To notice.
To drink from a deeper well
than words can name.

Happiness may invite me to dance,
but joy teaches me how to kneel.

It holds the ache of longing
and does not turn away.
It knows the shape of grief
and still sings.

Joy is not fleeting.
It abides.

It lives in the abiding place
of Grace,
where forgiveness roots itself
like wildflowers through broken stone,
and belonging becomes a quiet truth
in the marrow of things.

Joy is not earned.
It is remembered.

It is not loud.
It is true.

A Final Invitation

Where do you feel joy in your body? Not the kind that passes, but the kind that remains?
Not the shout, but the whisper.
Not the lightness, but the warmth that gathers deep in the belly,
near the soul’s hearth.

Today, may you notice something quiet and true.
May you listen for the joy that holds hands with grief,
and still chooses to rise.