This was a birthday gift from my Auntie. She likes to find things with my middle name!
Hello to you. How are you? Today my thoughts turn to Joy. Not only because it’s my middle name but because it is indeed a choice we can make in this life. I have to remind myself! I get so set in my ways – grumpy even. I feel like as I get older I have developed an armor to try and shield myself from getting hurt. Dr. Wilhelm Reich talked about such an armor in his work. Our bodies get rigid and we get almost frozen. When I was in love I was my least rigid. When I chose to approach life with joy my body was fluid and free.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Hello to you. How are you doing in your where and when as you visit me here? I have been having a pretty quiet day listening to some people like Joyce Meyer. One of the things she talks about a lot is how we can get robbed of our joy by “the enemy.” I don’t believe in a Satan, but I do believe for every positive force in the world there is an equal and powerful negative one. So if I am happy for whatever reason, there is an equal unhappy “something” waiting in the wings to swing the pendulum of my life.
So what I do when I feel like I am being robbed of my Joy, (my middle name)is I have to evaluate what’s going on in my life and see if there is anything I can do to “right the ship.” Some of it for me has to with something simple as routines. This morning I didn’t follow the routine of getting up, taking my medications and vitamins, making coffee and eating breakfast. Instead I decided to go and get groceries; something I dread doing. Just this minor change in routine affected my entire day and affected my “joy.”
A big part of reclaiming a sense of joy is to decide I am going to do it. I have to make a conscious decision that I want to be happy instead of dreading life. Lately I have been praying to God, the Holy Spirit in particular, for help with this because I know I can’t get out of the depression rut alone. Remembering to be thankful is a big key when I am in the process of reclaiming joy in life. Simple things like saying thank you for a meal, for a particular place and or person in my life. It’s the little things that add up to make a life worth living. It’s little things that are the building blocks to joy.
I am trying to get in the habit of writing everyday as a form of therapy. If there is anything you would like me to write about please let me know in the comments!
“Reclaiming Joy ” in the English Ordinal system equals 141
To be 