joy
It’s 10:10am on January 1, 2020. I am sitting on the couch wrapped in blankets with my steaming hot cup of bougie coffee in my hand. Since we last spoke, I have become an official coffee snob and silently judge anyone who settles for dirty bean water. I mean, seriously...what are you doing with your life? I digress. I am trying to meditate on my new word for the year, but I keep being drawn back to the chapter that just wrapped. 2019 wasn’t a bad year for us; it was just a year filled with lots of transition. While I typically don’t understand the real scope or meaning behind my word until late in year, this time it was down to the buzzer. The word the Lord gave me to navigate 2019 was joy.
I have always used joy as a synonym for happiness. They seem to be used interchangeably on a regular basis. I have even heard it preached that way from pulpits all across these great United States, but my journey with joy has shown me something a little different. While they are the same in the most basic sense, if we dig a little deeper, it becomes apparent that one of them has a lot more meat on it’s bones.
Happiness is light. It is the first cool breeze of fall after a hot, sweltering summer. It is slipping into those jeans that were too tight last month. It is the email that tells you that promotion you have been working on for 3 years is yours. It is a sip of hot coffee on a freezing winter morning (please see above). Happiness hits you. It comes to you in little ways throughout your day or week like a little spark of electricity in your chest. Happiness is a feeling.
Joy is a choice. Joy is deep. We feel it in our bones. Joy forces us to stop, take a mental snapshot and acknowledge that no matter how hard the circumstances of the moment, there is good here. Life doesn’t always FEEL good. I’ve had some really raw conversations this year with one of my dearest in the months following the loss of her father. Death is hard. Gut-wrenching most days. And grief is a beast we could spend hours unraveling and still never get to the end. But in every way, the place our conversation always came back to was this: “Is there good here?” Whether we see the good or whether we don’t, it’s a choice.
I have to admit that steps on my toes a bit. It puts way more personal responsibility back on me that I really want to own some days. Honestly, I like to keep a scapegoat in my back pocket that I can pull out at any time and point to as the reason for my discontentment. I mean, not all the time. I am an adult with an astronomical number of therapy hours under my belt. Most days, I can objectively look at a situation and figure out what is really happening and my part in it. But some days, I just don’t wanna. I want it to be my husband’s fault that I’m pissed off. I want to be my kid’s fault that I said that word. I want life to own the steaming pile of crap it has thrown my way. I want an excuse for my grumpy ways. Unfortunately, reality bites. Maturity requires that after I acknowledge the source of my angst, I have a choice. And joy is always an option.
Life is messy and things are rarely black and white. Seasons don’t come with a warning label about what’s inside. The good, the bad and the ugly are all thrown in together in a mixed-up bowl of a day or week or even year. In the midst of hurt and change and loss, 2019 has taught me that I always have a choice to look deep in my guts and settle on what is good versus what is wrong. I get to choose what I see in this fruit salad of my life. Please hear me. This is not a positivity sermon. This is a call to really examine my heart and my source. Joy doesn’t ask us to pretend that everything is good. But it does ask us to choose if we will see the good in every season.
©2020 liverightlovewell.com