I always believed in the white picket fence.

I was in my early 20s when, over the course of a year, it seemed as if I had lost everything a human being could lose.

My wife died by suicide not long after the death of our newborn, Jennifer.

Not long after, I lost both of my lower legs due to infection and, quite honestly, a lack of self-care.

Finally, my already fragile finances fractured and I found myself living in my car.

After a childhood with spina bifida and years of childhood sexual abuse, I was broken. Yet, my own suicide attempt failed.

So, I wheeled. I wheeled and I wheeled and I wheeled. I wheeled for 41 days and over 1,000 miles on an event I called "The Tenderness Tour" because, after all, tenderness was what I found myself looking for and I knew it would take 1,000 miles to find it.

I found it. I returned from that first Tenderness Tour convinced that the old tapes that playing throughout my life were lies and that there was a reason I was still alive.

I began to believe in the white picket fence. I began to believe in my good life.

I returned from that first trip, there have been 35 since, and I began slowly assembly the puzzle pieces of my life in an effort to build what I considered to be my good life.

Alas, there was no white picket fence.

I never remarried. I never had another child. I never became "happy," whatever happy means. I kept living. I kept wheeling. I built a better life with a good job, good projects, a tapestry of friends and family of choice.

I thought of all of this often throughout Kate Bowler's "Joyful, Anyway," Bowler's latest journey that weaves together personal testimony and academic excellence to explore the surprising magic of joy to carry us through the exhilarations and exhaustions of love and those often unbearable tensions that exist when we experience trauma or pain or loss or grief or illness or any other of life's inevitable benchmarks.

For many of us who read nearly everything Bowler writes, myself included, we already know that Bowler survived a stage-four cancer diagnosis. Having survived cancer twice myself in the past three years (bladder, prostate), I ache with familiarity as Bowler shares these stories just as Bowler herself ached knowing that she should be grateful and yet such an experience also leaves you longing for even more.

Now then, if you know Bowler's writing you know that this longing did not result in toxic positivity or some miracle plan or a journey into prosperity theology. Instead, it became an openness to the everyday simple experiences of joy.

"Joyful, Anyway" isn't about fixing one's life. It's also not about some faux denial-based joy that calls us into simply letting go of our traumas and our dramas. "Joyful, Anyway" is more about learning how to hold the door open for joy to surprise us so that we can live in the tension of a life where we experience everything and refuse to surrender our joy.

It has been 35 years since that first Tenderness Tour. Even being alive defies logic, though I'm not quite prepared to call it miraculous (especially after reading "Joyful, Anyway."). Life has turned out so extraordinary that a feature documentary recently had its world premiere about The Tenderness Tour and my current efforts to eliminate medical debt for others.

I've lived a life far beyond anything I've ever imagined.

Yet, there are still certain tense truths that continue to radiate throughout my physically difficult life filled with significant health issues, few natural supports to speak of, and a social awkwardness that I find both hilarious and embarrassing. Bowler, whose public persona is one of frequent laughter and deep compassion, exudes what I can only describe as an honest humanity and a rich tenderness throughout "Joyful, Anyway," a book where Bowler peels away the layers of her own existence to share with us that awkward tension that sometimes breaks us and other times resurrects our souls.

Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic