Around Christmastime of 2021, our church gave everyone a gift of poinsettia flowers to each member of the congregation. It was meant to be a symbol of joy, as we had gone through a lot over the course of the last couple of years, and everyone was feeling it. My middle child (five at the time) was the most enthused about this gift and begged to be the one to carry the plant home on her lap. Overzealous as she was, holding the plant by the leaves, shaking it around– as you can imagine, it was in quite poor shape when we got home.

For a few days, I sulked around the house, feeling that once again I had ruined something someone gave me. I put the plant in my kitchen window, and every time I looked at it and watched it fall apart from the trauma it had endured, it depressed me.

But then I decided maybe that wasn’t the lesson I should be focusing on here. The plant was traumatized, not dead, and trauma can be healed with the proper care. So I took to diligently watering the poinsettia every day. I took better care of this plant than I have ever taken of any plant I had ever been given. I left it in the kitchen window, as that was the part of the house that saw the most sun.

Sure, all the red leaves fell off, and many of the other leaves, too, but before long, it began to grow again. The stems started to lengthen. New leaves began to sprout. It may not resemble a poinsettia much anymore (getting the leaves to turn red requires specific treatment and can only be done at certain times of the year) but it was growing again; getting healthy. For once, I actually did start to find joy as I helped it to grow. I realized that joy is not something given to us, it is something we have to create for ourselves.

As I related this story to my friends and told them what I had learned, they began to tell me the stories of the ways in which their poinsettias had been forgotten. Left in the backyard or the dark garage. One was damaged before even making it out of the church parking lot, as it had been left on top of the family’s vehicle.

This led me to the real lesson: not only is joy something you have to create for yourself, but it is often more appreciated when it follows a time of crisis. The plant still sits in my kitchen as a reminder and has brought me joy all year round.