Undaunted Joy: The Revolutionary Act of Cultivating Delight

Does joy just seem too difficult to come by these days? Does it seem irresponsible or naïve? Maybe you don't feel like you can be joyful, don't know how to, or don't deserve to?

In this collection of short essays on defiant joy, Shemaiah Gonzalez reflects on how she gradually learned to see joy not as an indulgence but as a necessity--a way of life and the fruit of faith. But her journey to joy was long. It had been so absent throughout much of her life that it felt foreign at first.

Through her own stories, Gonzalez discovers along with you how joy is the fruit of knowing God. Like God, once you start looking for joy, you might start finding it everywhere. Like God, sometimes it initially feels unsafe.

"Perhaps these stories, of finding joy in laundry and Van Gogh's paintings of sunflowers, in daydreaming, and even in the darkest of places, will allow you to see life anew. Perhaps you will, like me, no longer wait for the big things to happen but will find there is abundance today. Each day holds joy in the mundane and the magnificent--we just need to learn to see."

Over the course of these 37 essays, Gonzalez, vulnerable and lively, will draw you into a new way of seeing that will revolutionize your everyday. It's time to claim God's goodness and share it with abandon, not in spite of the brokenness of the world, but because of it.

It's time to live joyously.

Shemaiah Gonzalez is a writer with degrees in English Literature (BA), Intercultural Ministry (MAPS) and Creative Non-Fiction Writing (MFA). She thrives in moments where storytelling, art, literature, and faith collide. Her work has appeared in America Magazine, Image Journal's Good Letters, Ekstasis, The Curator, and Loyola Press, among others. A Los Angeles native, she now lives in Seattle with her husband, whom she has known since she was 14 years old, and their two teen sons.