It is high summer in West Michigan.
Lake Michigan is finally warming into that perfect July temperature—the kind that makes you forget the shock of the first step into the water. The peaches are beginning to blush. Blueberries stain fingertips purple. The evenings stretch themselves thin with soft light and gentle breezes, reluctant to surrender to night.
Summer has always been my favorite season.
So I fully expected to write today’s blog reminding us of all the goodness in the world–about all the ways the world still offers beauty if we slow down long enough to notice it.
Instead, here we are.
My daughter and her best friend made a new best friend this week. As is typical of teenage young women, they immediately began borrowing pieces from each other. New words. New jokes. New ways of seeing the world.
By the end of their very first day together, they had adopted a new vocabulary.
Everything was either Jolly or Not Jolly. Simple. Honest. Absolute.
It goes like this:
New friends: Jolly
New friends who live in another state: Not Jolly
Swimming in Lake Michigan in July: Jolly
Smoke from wildfires hundreds of miles away settling over Lake Michigan until the horizon disappears: Not Jolly
Sun-ripened blueberries: Jolly
A Cyclospora outbreak in the middle of berry season: Not Jolly
As I listened to them laugh and sing and screech in ways only teenage girls can, I thought about my own list:
Brown men murdered by ICE agents in front of their families: Not Jolly
Black boys and men killed in the streets: Not Jolly
Lies dressed up as truth, half-truths, misdirection, cover-ups: Not Jolly
Sexual violence, misogyny, the casual dismissal of women’s humanity: Not Jolly
Division and distrust: Not Jolly
Institutions cracking under the weight of power and pride: Not Jolly
You get the picture.
I really wanted this to be a Jolly blog. I really was hoping to write about all of the good things in the world because there are so many good things. Love. Beauty. Truth. Kindness. Michigan peaches still warm from the sun. New friends taking words like “Jolly” and making them magical. Friends gathering around tables that become sacred spaces. There is so much goodness.
And yet there is also so much smoke. Some days–most days lately–it feels as though the Not Jolly hangs over everything like the haze shrouding Lake Michigan. The beauty is still there, but you have to squint to find it. I hate that.
I hate that what should be a season of slow mornings, long dinners on the porch, evening swims, too much ice cream, and fingers sticky from dripping peach juice is so often interrupted by headlines that make my stomach sick. I hate watching people entrusted with power choose cruelty over compassion, spectacle over service, fear over love.
It is exhausting.
It is Not Jolly.
For most of my life, I was told that I was too emotional, too dramatic, too sensitive. (God bless the Enneagram 6s!) What I’ve learned over the years (God bless therapists!) as I’ve learned to show myself more grace is that I simply notice. I notice what is happening around me. And I feel it. Sometimes those two things feel less like gifts and more like burdens. I guess you could say that it’s Not Jolly. But I’m learning to accept it.
Because someone has to keep paying attention. Someone has to keep remembering. Someone has to say, “This happened.” Someone has to document what we are witnessing. The importance of witnessing and documenting isn’t because naming the darkness makes it disappear. But because pretending it isn’t there never has.
You may recall that my word for 2026 is tenacity. Lately, I’ve been wondering if tenacity isn’t always loud. Maybe tenacity looks like refusing to become numb. Maybe it is the quiet discipline of paying attention–of bearing witness. Maybe tenacity is documenting both the beauty and the brokenness. Maybe tenacity is simply refusing to let the Not Jolly have the final word.
Because every time we name what is broken, we are also confessing that we remember what wholeness looks like. Every time we name what is broken, we are showing that we still believe another world is possible.
So today I will keep both lists–naming the things that are Not Jolly in an effort to point to the things that are, or could be, Jolly.
New friends are Jolly.
Dinner parties overflowing with laughter and conversations that become holy are Jolly.
Lake Michigan at sunset is Jolly.
Walks beneath cathedral pines are Jolly.
Sun-warm blueberries and peaches dripping down your wrists are Jolly.
Long hugs are Jolly.
The opportunity for change, for growth, for healing, and wholeness is Jolly.
Hope—especially hope that refuses to die—is Jolly.
The world is aching. The world is beautiful. Both things are true.
And perhaps the most Jolly thing we can do is keep noticing both.
A final note:
In beautiful, holy synchronicity, the Prayer of Confession prayed at my church service yesterday included the following words that I needed to hear and to say.
We know Christ to be our only hope. We have enmeshed our world in a realm of sin, rebelled against God, accepted inhuman oppression of humanity, and even crucified God’s son. God’s world has been trapped by our fall, governments entangled by human pride, and nature polluted by human greed. Our only hope is Jesus Christ.
7 Responses
Well, Kathryn ,, I am a 6 also. I am Kerin Beauchamp’s mom too.
Boy, can I relate – yikes.
What a beautiful- real- hopeful writing. !!
A week ago I was liturgist at the tiny Methodist church in my neighborhood. I was not given the readings until I got to church. Uggg , not like to be unprepared,, so I started with the word Boom cha Kala ka friends! Explaining my unpreparedness scares me so I chose the phrase from the movie Stripes to loosen up. We all giggled ( church style) .
I just love your teens “ jolly” and “ not jolly “ description.
Thank you so much for sharing and improving my day!!
Thank you for these reflections, which capture exactly my feelings as I sit at my cottage in Ontario and watch the apocalyptic smoke from the fires north of me occupy my bay, see governments not doing their job, and indeed see they and so many others making so many things so much worse. They are not paying attention or simply don’t care.
It is indeed our job to pay attention.To the smoke and why it is happening, and so much else To pay attention to what must be changed – but also to the joys we are given.
Thank you again.
Both/and is Jolly True. Thank you!
Thank you for stating so clearly what I also feel as a person who “ simply notices” things going on around us. I can’t NOT notice…… and then feel the joy or the burden.
Kathy, I love this so much. It’s perfect.
Thanks for noticing what’s going on in our world, Kathryn, and sharing the positive and negatives with us. I see similar kinds of thinking in the Bible. We think on the despair in our hearts, like so many laments in the Bible do. We think on societal woes, like the prophets pointed out so pointedly. We think on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable so that can rejoice in the Lord always. We think on things above, where Christ is. We think on Jesus, risen from the dead (2 Timothy 2:8). We are people with good news in a bad news world. We shouldn’t ignore the bad news, but neither does it help to be overwhelmed by it. For me, it’s helpful to remember that God wants me to think relationally. I want to think thoughts that build up my relationship with God, other Christians, and those who are not yet Christians. Sometimes that means thinking on negative things (like my sin or the ways that others are being sinned against), but that’s only helpful if these negative thoughts lead to proper relational actions, like turning to God in prayer, apologies to others, standing up for others who are mistreated, etc. Without the relational component, then all I’ve got is unhelpful thoughts of despair or rage. Anyway, that’s how I’m thinking of it.
Thank you, Kathy! To keep our balance between the jolly and not jolly is our daily challenge, as it has been since the beginning….