Hello invisible internet friends! This is the first post in what will hopefully be a prolific blog about my journey to find and take joy wherever I can (and how you can too!). As I am writing this, I am picturing you, dear friend, who has stumbled on my site a few years from now and who has decided to go wayyyyy back into the archives to glean as much information as possible from me. I have a vision that this tiny little blog and the woman writing it will one day be helping thousands of women every single day. So if that’s you, my futuristic friend, welcome! I can’t wait to help you! Or maybe you are one of a few people actually reading this close to when it’s been written (hi husband!). Hello to you too! I hope you stick around, because there is so much good to come. But first let’s talk a little about how I got here.
Let’s start at the very beginning…
I was sitting in my car one July day having just strapped my one year old daughter into her carseat as tears streamed down my cheeks. We had just left our most recent therapy appointment for feeding and swallowing, meant to get our girl on track to be able to eat solid foods on her own. She’d had surgery two weeks prior and my expectation that this would magically fix everything had (unsurprisingly) not been met. At home, I knew my home was a wreck and my older two boys, aged four and six, were likely alternating between fighting and running completely wild through the house. I pictured the pile of dishes sitting in my sink, the pillows strewn about the living room from their latest fort creation, and the cracker crumbs that were surely dusting my floor. I thought about the many nights ahead of me waking up several times a night to nurse my daughter since breastmilk was still her main source of nourishment. I thought about my job and the string of unanswered emails I still had to get to that morning. Also I had contracted shingles which were incredibly painful and like, gross. And I felt overwhelmed. But as quickly as my eyes filled that morning, my heart was opened and the Lord spoke to me.
“…yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” Habakkuk 3:18
I had been listening to a podcast on the way to our appointment that morning, and the host had quoted this verse from Habakkuk: “…yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” The words TAKE JOY jumped out at me through my car speakers. Take joy, God? You mean joy is not just going to fill my heart automatically? I have to work at this? Actually, that’s kind of a relief. A huge one, to be honest. Because in combining those two words, take joy, we see that we don’t have to wait for the perfect circumstances to be joyful. We aren’t expected to just automatically feel joy at every moment of our day. But what’s great is we are empowered to take it for ourselves, in every circumstance and at every opportunity. Talk about good news. God had laid this sweet message onto my heart and He did it with such love and tenderness. In that moment I knew that this was something that He wanted me to not only receive, but to share as well.
I’m a bit of a control freak.
I really like being in control. It’s something I’m working on (and will probably have to continue working on for my whole life). Over the years in my quest to become less of a control freak, I’ve learned that there are a lot, a LOT, of things that are completely out of our control. Other people are at the top of that list. What has amazed me and changed my life, however, was learning that some of the things that I felt were out of my control were 100% within my power to change. I’m not a slave to my feelings and thoughts – I can control them just as much as I control my choices and actions. What?! This is the very core of Taking Joy.
What’s Next?
My hope for this blog is to show you what I’ve learned and teach you how to do it yourself. To take control of your own mind – your thoughts and your feelings – and in doing so, change your life. I pray that today as you read this, it’s your first step in your journey to taking joy at every opportunity. I’m in this with you. Let’s take joy together.
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