{"id":157,"date":"2009-12-03T13:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-03T13:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html"},"modified":"2009-12-03T13:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-03T13:13:00","slug":"joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html","title":{"rendered":"Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size:medium\">I&#8217;ve been thinking recently of the idea that Christians are called to self-sacrificial love, to carry our cross, etc. And I look at my life and wonder&#8211;do I do this? On some level, I&#8217;m sure the answer is no. But on another level, yes. I just don&#8217;t think of it as self-sacrifice. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family:georgia, serif\">When William cries in the night, or when I miss a day of classes because Penny needs surgery, or when I slowed down for a few years so she could get extensive therapy, or when my dad is in the hospital and we go visit him&#8230; All of those things are, from a certain vantage point, self-sacrificial. I put aside my wants (maybe my needs) for the needs and wants of another. And yet I don&#8217;t experience it as self-sacrificial. I experience it as joy.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking recently of the idea that Christians are called to self-sacrificial love, to carry our cross, etc. And I look at my life and wonder&#8211;do I do this? On some level, I&#8217;m sure the answer is no. But on another level, yes. I just don&#8217;t think of it as self-sacrifice. When William cries&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-down-syndrome"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Joy - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Joy - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve been thinking recently of the idea that Christians are called to self-sacrificial love, to carry our cross, etc. And I look at my life and wonder&#8211;do I do this? On some level, I&#8217;m sure the answer is no. But on another level, yes. I just don&#8217;t think of it as self-sacrifice. 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On some level, I&#8217;m sure the answer is no. But on another level, yes. I just don&#8217;t think of it as self-sacrifice. When William cries&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html","og_site_name":"Thin Places","article_published_time":"2009-12-03T13:13:00+00:00","author":"amyjuliabecker","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html","name":"Joy - Thin Places","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-12-03T13:13:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-12-03T13:13:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/4dde10eee38770361dc9b46a9413776b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/joy.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Joy"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/","name":"Thin Places","description":"Amy Julia Becker on Faith, Family, and Disability","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/4dde10eee38770361dc9b46a9413776b","name":"amyjuliabecker","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/222\/2222023dcae76abe6e896a3cf80e9836x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/222\/2222023dcae76abe6e896a3cf80e9836x96.jpg","caption":"amyjuliabecker"},"description":"Amy Julia Becker writes about theology, disability, family, and culture. Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}