Finding Joy

Today I begin a year long journey of finding joy in every day.  It is a good day to start!  Today is the first day of my 58th year of walking on this planet.  It has been a rough life.  A really tough last decade. There have been a lot of bleak days,especially over the last three years. Each of the last three years have had their own special challenges, with decisions that left me far from joyful.  Putting Dad in a nursing home, in spite of himself, was one of the hardest.  Days of doubting that I was doing the right thing, thinking about the end of life, and how horrendous the decision I had made, even though I was forced into the position by circumstance.  There was little joy in any of it.  But when I stopped to think about it, there still was something to find joy in about it.  Losing my house, then moving, moving, moving, each time to somewhere cheaper and cheaper, just to make that dollar stretch. And so much more.  I won't bore you with the details.

But each time I found that there was something within that kept me going.  There was more of me to discover, deeper things than what appeared on the surface. With all that was going on, it seemed there would never be a time that I was settled, but somehow God showed me the bigger things in life; things that kept me joyful and hopeful.  And there was the key to my little journey here.

Last night I went to bed in horrible pain.  I was injured in a horrible fall in 1998 that left one leg tremendously shorter than the other.  To top it off, my left ankle will never be the same.  No actually to top it off, I sprained my right ankle in my attempts to keep moving by walking every day.  So now I am limping on both feet.  Attempting to nod off to sleep, the pain throbbing in both ankles, I thought How can I find joy in this life?

I thought about all that had happened in the past.  All the awful things that life had dealt me.  And then I thought about what the outcome had been from all of those things.  In each one, I saw that God had worked something in my life as a direct result of them.  And I found a moment of joy, in knowing that God had a plan for me, and that He would work it out, in spite of my resistance.  I found joy in that, and peace, in spite of pain.

So I made a promise to myself last night that I was going to try to find some moment of joy in every day, and share it with the world.

This morning, when I got up to make the coffee, I found that it was already made, a beautiful card sitting by it, with a note inside saying "Thank you for being there, even when I insist that you go away!"  It was from my daughter, who, needless to say, can be a bit aloof.  Born that way, we all say, but time and circumstances in life have reinforced it.  And yet she still found it in herself to think of the very first thing I would think about in the morning.  Coffee.

I am sure that because today is my birthday, there will be many other joys come my way.  It is a good day to start this task.
I will keep you posted.  :)

PS.
The crowning moment of the day came when I had dinner with all of my offspring and grand offspring at my favorite restaurant.  It was not the food.  It was not the fact that it is my favorite restaurant. It was watching my family, enjoined in lively conversation, enjoying each others company, and the realization that I had three little boys sitting up in my lap who have been duped into thinking I am wonderful. Boy, do I have them fooled!