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b"\\u201cMy vocation was supposed to be joy, and I was speaking at funerals.\\u201d

Shortly after being hired by Yale University to study joy, Angela Gorrell got word that a close family member had died by suicide. Less than a month later, she lost her father to a fatal opioid addiction and her nephew, only twenty-two years old, to sudden cardiac arrest. The theoretical joy she was researching at Yale suddenly felt shallow and distant\\u2014completely unattainable in the fog of grief she now found herself in.

But joy was closer at hand than it seemed. As she began volunteering at a women\\u2019s maximum-security prison, she met people who suffered extensively yet still showed a tremendous capacity for joy. Talking with these women, many of whom had struggled with addiction and suicidal thoughts themselves, she realized: \\u201cJoy doesn\\u2019t obliterate grief. . . . Instead, joy has a mysterious capacity to be felt alongside sorrow and even\\u2014sometimes most especially\\u2014in the midst of suffering.\\u201d

This is the story of Angela\\u2019s discovery of an authentic, grounded Christian joy. But even more, it is an invitation for others to seize upon this more resilient joy as a counteragent to the twenty-first-century epidemics of despair, addiction, and suicide\\u2014a call to action for communities that yearn to find joy and are willing to \\u201cwalk together through the shadows\\u201d to find it.

Dr. Angela Williams Gorrell joined Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminaryin fall 2019 as Assistant Professor of Practical Theology. Prior to joining the faculty at Baylor University, she was an Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, working on the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, and a lecturer in Divinity and Humanities at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She is an ordained pastor with 14 years of ministry experience. Dr. Gorrell is passionate about finding issues that matter to people and shining the light of the Gospel on them. She is the author of always on: practicing faith in a new media landscape and a new book, The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found, which shares findings of the joy project while addressing America\\u2019s opioid and suicide crises. Dr. Gorrell\\u2019s expertise is in the areas of theology and contemporary culture, education and formation, meaning-making, joy, new media, and youth and emerging adults. Dr. Gorrell regularly consults, speaks, and leads workshops and retreats on her research and areas of expertise."