Portland Magazine
June 9, 2021
By Valerie Lewis-Mosley
Collage by Heather Polk
My life is a paradox. And so is my joy.
My ability as a healer—a critical-care obstetrics nurse gifted with bringing new life into the world and nurturing the mind, body, and spirit of women—has not shielded me from my own health issues or life-threatening experiences or losses.
My immune system, which is supposed to support and promote wellness, actually attacks and plays havoc with my body.
My existence as a Black woman living in a world structured against me is also the existence of one who knows transcendent joy.
Joy, so central to my life, a gift of the Holy Spirit, is with me even now, when COVID-19 has immersed me in pastoral work to assist others in their struggle to survive and sustain their spiritual and mental health. Even this year, in the presence of so much death, I have not lost my joy.
How?
You would not be the first to ask.
For many years, my clinical area of specialty was in women’s and children’s health—birthing babies and caring for mothers. I loved my work.
My day began at 7:30 a.m. Across the street from this New York City-Upper Eastside medical center was a Catholic church. I would enter the church daily, either for morning Mass if I had time, or for a short prayer at the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. My prayer was always one of thanksgiving and a request to bless and protect my day—and that of my staff and patients. I began my day on the unit with a smile and good morning to the staff.
One day one of my colleagues asked me, “How can you be so bubbly so early in the morning? Don’t you ever get up on the wrong side of the bed?”
This colleague was disgruntled with life and wanted me to know that not everything was so peaches and cream.
But I already knew that.
The lessons of joy that transcends suffering are rooted in my ancestors, in my development as a descendant of enslaved African and African American Freedwomen. For my ancestors and elders, the whole of their survival was rooted in the awareness of the Immanent, a power outside of themselves, permanently pervading and sustaining the universe. Theirs was an ability to know the Creator God in every aspect of their being. This awareness of God with them is how my family has defined the experience of joy. No matter what hardship they faced—the indignity of racism and Jim Crow laws in the deep south as well as the de facto segregation up north—they found joy in knowing that Immanuel was with them and for them. Even in their suffering, they experienced the joy of God—for the Son of God, Jesus, had also endured suffering. Their Good Friday sufferings were never felt in isolation. The promise and hope of Jesus always accompanied them in the grandeur and misery of life. It is this centeredness in the presence of God that sustains the ever-flowing fount of joy in me.
The Scripture tells us in Psalm 30 that weeping and pain may occur for a while but that joy comes in the morning. I often look at this Scripture as twofold: that joy will be present at the end of a time of grieving and that JOY, what my cousin Sr. Lynn Marie Ralph, SBS, called Jesus Our Yes, is present even in the midst of mourning and suffering.
There was irony in being skilled and credentialed as a high-risk senior clinical nurse in an obstetrical critical care unit, while also being susceptible to pregnancy complications. My expertise could not protect me from the experiences and the statistics of disproportionate life-threatening risks faced by far too many pregnant Black women.
But even when I had experienced three tragic premature losses of my own—my joy never wavered. Although one will experience sadness and grief, JOY—Jesus Our Yes—is ever present if we but allow ourselves to be receptive.
Remember that colleague who could not understand my daily expressions of joy? Well, after a lengthy hospital admission to sustain a complicated pregnancy, this colleague came to visit me. He still could not understand how I had managed for many years to sustain such a spirit of joy in the presence of my complicated medical history and numerous pregnancy losses. He could not understand how I continued to stay in a clinical area of practice—day in and day out providing care to new mothers. My response to him then and to others now all of these many years later: God’s joy is sufficient. It is the long-lived lessons gifted to me from a long line of women who have endured suffering without becoming joyless. It is because the joy was not of their own circumstance but infused into them to sustain them through the troubles and hardship. The joy of the Lord is my strength.
Valerie D. Lewis-Mosley is an adjunct professor of theology at Caldwell University and Xavier University of Louisiana—Institute for Black Catholic Studies. She is a Lay Associate Order of Preachers—Caldwell Dominicans.
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