In her latest book, Kate Bowler proves that experiencing joy does not depend on resolving everything that makes life difficult. Drawing on a decade of living with serious illness and a lifetime studying America’s obsession with progress, Joyful, Anyway, shows why people so busy chasing happiness miss out on actual joy.

Joy isn’t something you can optimize or manufacture—it finds us at the edge of expectation, when life interrupts our scripts. Joyful, Anyway gives language for the ache we all carry and practices for “putting yourself in the way of joy”: loosening control, introducing novelty, choosing charity, and staying open to the surprising, technicolor moments that pull us back into life.

Joy reminds us that no matter what, life is still worth loving. For every time we ask is this it?, joy will answer: There is more.

Bowler is the associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School, The New York Times best-selling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I've Loved) and Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection, and host of the Everything Happens Podcast.