The Joy Series:

Finding Joy in Relationships – The People Who Water Your Garden

Post 5 of the Joy Series

 

I want to start this post with a woman you have never met. Her name was Dorothy. But to me, she was Mom.

She was one of the most giving, loving, and quietly joyful people I have ever known. She volunteered for my brother’s school and for the Special Olympics. She collected money for the American Heart Association. She was always the first to show up when a neighbor was in need. She loved deeply and without condition and without judgment.

And she did all of this while living in a home where her own joy was being quietly diminished. My father was not kind to her. He stifled who she was and who she could have become. He did not honor her the way she deserved to be honored.

And yet her joy shone through. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But steadily, like a candle that refuses to go out no matter how strong the wind.

I did not understand until very recently, sitting with my own story and my own hard-won journey back to joy, that my mother was my first teacher. She showed me, without ever saying a word about it, that joy is not something life hands you. It is something you choose to tend, even when the conditions are hard. Even when the people closest to you are not watering your garden. Even when your own heart is hurting.

She passed that to me. And I did not even realize it until now. This post is for her.

The People Who Show Up

When my husband of 37 years walked out, my world went silent in ways I had not anticipated. The loss was not just the marriage. It was the community around it. The shared friendships. The church we had pastored together. The life we had built side by side for nearly four decades.

And in that silence, I discovered something both painful and beautiful about relationships. Some people show up. And some people don’t.

A woman from our church wrapped her arms around me and took me under her wing. No questions. No conditions. Just presence and warmth and the quiet message that I was not alone. She was my Dorothy in that season. She showed up the way my mother would have shown up if she had still been here.

A friend I made at work became one of my greatest sources of joy during those years. We talked. We laughed. We traveled together. She distracted me from my pain simply by being present and by sharing life with me in ordinary, beautiful ways.

I joined meetup groups and found casual friendships that carried their own quiet joy. People who did not know my story, who just knew me as I was becoming, not as I had been. There is a particular freedom in that kind of friendship, and I was grateful for every one of them.

Even in my deepest pain, just being around these people brought something back. They made me laugh when I had forgotten how. They invited me into activities and adventures that reminded me life was still full of good things. They watered my garden when I had no strength left to do it myself.

The People Who Don’t

I want to be honest about this part too, because I think it is important and I think many of you will recognize it.

Many people from the church we had pastored turned their backs on me. They judged me. They made assumptions about what had happened and what it meant and who I was. And in the middle of the most devastating season of my life, that rejection stung in ways that are hard to describe.

I was shocked at first. These were people I had served alongside. People I had prayed with and supported and loved. And when I needed them most, they were nowhere to be found.

But here is what I learned, and what I want to pass on to you: You cannot tend your garden and fight your neighbor’s weeds at the same time.

I made a decision, not immediately, but over time, to stop focusing on the people who had turned away and to pour my energy into the people who had shown up. The ones who called. The ones who sat with me. The ones who wrapped their arms around me without judgment.

That decision was one of the most important ones I made in my journey back to joy. Because the people who judge you from a distance do not deserve the energy you need for your own healing.

What Relationships Teach Us About Joy

Here is what I have come to understand about relationships and joy after everything I have lived through.

We are not designed to tend our gardens alone. The Ubuntu philosophy we explored in Post 3, “I am because we are” – it is true in the most practical, lived sense. We need people. We need warmth and laughter and shared experience and the simple, profound comfort of someone sitting beside us in the hard moments.

My mother understood this. Even when her own home was difficult, she poured herself into community. Into her neighbors. Into the families of children with special needs. Into anyone who needed what she had to give. And in that giving, she found and maintained a joy that her circumstances could not extinguish.

She was not waiting for perfect conditions to be joyful. She was creating joy through connection, through service, through love.

That is the gift she left me. And it is the gift I want to pass on to you.

The Relationships That Water Your Garden

Not every relationship in your life will water your garden. Some will drain it. Some will ignore it entirely. And some, the rare and precious ones, will show up with everything they have and pour themselves into helping you grow.

Your job is to know the difference. And to invest your most precious energy, your time, your vulnerability, your presence, in the relationships that give life rather than take it.

Here is how I learned to tell the difference:

The people who water your garden show up without being asked. They sit with you in the silence. They make you laugh even when you have forgotten how. They do not judge your pain or rush your healing. They share ordinary moments with you and make those moments feel like enough.

The people who drain your garden require you to perform. They need you to be okay before you are ready. They disappear when things get hard. They judge what they do not understand. They take more than they give.

You do not have to be unkind to the second group. But you do not have to water them either.

Finding Your People

If you are in a season of loss or pain right now, and your circle feels empty or broken, I want to encourage you to do what I did. Go looking for your people. They are out there.

Join a group around something you love. A book club, a hiking group, a volunteer organization, a meetup around a shared interest. Put yourself in rooms where people are doing things that bring them joy and let their joy be contagious.

You do not have to arrive healed. You do not have to have your story figured out. You just have to show up.

Your people will find you. And when they do, you will feel your garden begin to bloom again in ways you had forgotten were possible.

A Word About the People We Wish Were Still Here

I want to end this post where I began it. With Dorothy.

One of the hardest parts of my journey back to joy was knowing that the person I most wanted to call was gone. My mother would have wrapped her arms around me while I cried. She would not have said a word. She would not have judged or advised or tried to fix anything. She would have just held me.

If you have lost someone whose presence would have carried you through your hardest season, I see you. That grief is real and it is its own kind of loss layered on top of everything else.

But here is what I have come to believe: the people we have lost do not stop watering our gardens. They leave something behind in us. A way of seeing the world. A capacity for love. A stubborn, quiet joy that refuses to be extinguished no matter the conditions. My mother left that in me. And I carry her with me into every garden I tend.

Your Homework for Post 5

This week I want you to think about the relationships in your life.

Who waters your garden? Name them. Reach out to one of them this week and tell them what they mean to you. Joy shared is joy multiplied, and the people who show up for us deserve to know it.

And if your circle feels thin right now, take one small step toward finding your people. One group. One event. One yes when everything in you wants to say no.

Your garden needs people. And the right people are looking for a garden like yours.

 

Who has watered your garden during your hardest season? I would love to hear about them in the comments. Let’s celebrate the people who show up.

God Bless You On Your Journey,

KathieyV
kathieyvwriter@gmail.com