Finding Joy

Day 2.  Too much celebration.  I struggle out of bed, stiff and achy.  My smile is permanently emblazoned across my face in lipstick I forgot to wash off.  I struggle up to make coffee.  I squint at the light streaming through the front window. I slip on my slippers, and shiver out into the cold of the morning (If Tucson has cold at all.) My back hurts, my leg hurts, my head hurts.  You would have thought I had consumed alcohol, but the fact is, at 58, when you have been less than kind to your body, you don't have to have alcohol to feel like this. 

Coffee eases the pain.  Contrary to popular belief, it does not kick start the brain.  Too much celebration can be the cause for laying all day on the couch, which I am inclined to do today, but have too much to do to let myself. So as I drink my coffee, watch the sun come up over the mountain (and the apartment complex), I am thinking about all I have to do today.  And then God's light hits me like a spotlight.  A song is running through my head.

Would you dare, would you dare to believe, that you still have a reason to sing, cause the hurt that you've been feeling, it can't compare to the joy that's coming...  Thank you,God (and Josh Wilson.)

Do I dare to believe at 58 that life holds more for me?  I mean more than just enjoying retirement, which is looming ahead.  Do I dare to dream?  Do I dare to move ahead, or will I just be stuck playing safe? 

I think about my Dad, who is a patient in a nursing home now, and yet fights for his right to be taken to church every Sunday, who was sad when he was told he couldn't teach Sunday School anymore, but still was looking for something that God wanted him to do.  It occurs to me that I still have to press on and fight the good fight, even if I have to limp to do it.