Shemaiah Gonzalez
  • The Latest
  • Bio
  • Publications
  • Speaking/Workshops/Retreats
  • Writing Coach
  • Undaunted Joy

Shemaiah Gonzalez

  • The Latest/
  • Bio/
  • Publications/
  • Speaking/Workshops/Retreats/
  • Writing Coach/
  • Undaunted Joy/
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Shemaiah Gonzalez

Undaunted Joy

Shemaiah Gonzalez

  • The Latest/
  • Bio/
  • Publications/
  • Speaking/Workshops/Retreats/
  • Writing Coach/
  • Undaunted Joy/

What if we weren't intimidated by the task of living with joy?

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Through a collection of short essays, I recommend a fresh view on life, using my own experiences and discovery of joy in both the mundane and magnificent. In energetic prose, we find delight together in naps, capybaras, and wandering the English countryside. When we turn our attention to the joy around us, we become attuned to God's constant presence with us and in all these things.

This is not toxic positivity. I am no stranger to the darkness present in the world. Rather, knowing both darkness and light helps us acknowledge the disparity between the two. Undaunted Joy dares to stare darkness in the eye and respond in joy as an act of defiance.

Over the course of 37 essays, I will encourage you to look at the world through the lens of joy, even when faced with the pain and hardship, and thereby revolutionize your everyday. In teaching readers to see joy as a way of life, Undaunted Joy gives us permission to claim God's goodness even in a broken world and to share it with abandon.

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

“My favorite sentence in Shemaiah Gonzalez’s book is ‘He wanted to paint joy.’ It might surprise you to know that she’s writing about Van Gogh and his art. That’s what Gonzalez does with this book. She can take a person almost universally known as a symbol of desperation and see the brightness in him. We live in fraught times—we’ve always lived in fraught times—but Gonzalez teaches us that people have always found their way to joy.”
— Sherman Alexie, author of National Book Award Winner The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Don’t forget to leave a review after you’ve read the book, or share about it on social media!

 
 
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ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

“The call to joy from Job to Jack Gilbert and Chuang Tzu to Ross Gay runs through world faith traditions, world poetry, and the lives of saints and sages as one of our greatest antidotes to despair. In this quiet, family-oriented, often humorous book Shemaiah Gonzalez has boarded that good ship. May its voyages grow in number and never end.”
— David James Duncan, author of Sun House and The Brothers K

 

  • The Latest/
  • Bio/
  • Publications/
  • Speaking/Workshops/Retreats/
  • Writing Coach/
  • Undaunted Joy/

Shemaiah Gonzalez

Thrives on moments where storytelling, art and faith collide. 

The Latest

Featured
Waking to a Grace-Filled Day
October 2, 2026
Waking to a Grace-Filled Day
October 2, 2026

I wrote about waking to a grace filled day.

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October 2, 2026
Expectations for Prayer
September 21, 2026
Expectations for Prayer
September 21, 2026

I always come to this prayer time with auspicious expectations. I know God is going to show up. I just don’t know how. I am always surprised how he does.

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September 21, 2026
St Francis Xavier and Avoiding Spinning
August 28, 2026
St Francis Xavier and Avoiding Spinning
August 28, 2026

If we keep our eyes on Jesus, small acts of service and love, like those lived out by St. Francis Xavier, will reap more rewards than we could ever imagine.

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August 28, 2026
The Wheel and the Clay: The Inner Lives of Christian Artists
August 18, 2026
The Wheel and the Clay: The Inner Lives of Christian Artists
August 18, 2026

I must pinch myself that I am part of this collection from Ignatius Press ! It comes out next month but is available for preorder now.

How easily we forget that we are, at every moment, shaped with care by a Creator. Artists, however—who know intimately the blood, sweat, and tears of the creative process—can help us sense how marvelous it is to be created: the patience, the detail, the joy. In this essential collection, thirty-one Christian artists from various disciplines, from music to poetry to film to sculpture, offer personal essays on the strange experience of following God’s lead by making beautiful things.

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August 18, 2026
Review: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
August 17, 2026
Review: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
August 17, 2026

Goldberg is much more practical than many of the texts that I have read.  She gives you much to hold onto.

Read more →
August 17, 2026

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