JOY; No place for thieves

I hate so bad to tell you this. For many reasons, I hate to tell. The marrow in my bones hate to admit it but tell I must. For by the telling, one may find support and overcome. There is something healing about voicing a problem. Admitting a problem is the first step to overcoming, according to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). My problem is not one of an addiction but one of an emotional issue. I have yet to find my joy in this Christmas season and this is a real problem for me. We are less than two weeks away from celebrating Jesus’ birth and yet I feel numb to the whole season. Blah. Its almost sacrilegious to say it but I’m just being open and transparent. On any other year, I never have to search for it. For that matter, on any given day, I am joyful and then as Christmas approaches, my joy ramps up. Joy always finds me (or I find it). My Christmas joy starts in July when I start thinking about the glorious Christmas songs. I start buying presents and tucking them in every nook and cranny of the house. Then just like that, August rolls in and I am listening and singing along with Joy to the World, O Holy Night, and the traditional lists that adorn any church hymnal. Christmas begins overcrowding the shelves in the stores by Halloween and by this time I am in full blown baby Jesus and wreath mode. I am nearly putting myself in a straight jacket to keep from unpacking and putting out the decorations. Pure, glorious, organic joy. But it hasn’t happened like that at all this year.

This year is different. Witnessing unkind deeds (and hand signals) while driving on the interstates makes me more aware of the madness of people. Watching the news of Black Friday shopping mobs fighting over TVs and toys validates that people are more savage than I ever thought. The way in which people bicker and lie and talk to one another causes me great annoyance. In our own personal circle, dealing with selfish people who only want to take from us rather than invest in our relationship has caused me pause and reflection. People are selfish, self-centered and downright killjoys. They suck the very life and joy out of everyone and everything around them, unless of course the focus is on them. You know the kind. You’re probably reading this and nodding in agreement as their names flash across your sweet and sane brain cells. Thieves they are!

I find I have been counting the days of this year end and pining for the New Year more than ever. I just want to get over it and get on with it. I want to retreat from people and protect my peace more than ever but the cost has been my joy. This is so out of character that I don’t even want to be around myself. I have prayed really hard about my attitude and I have sought the word JOY in the bible. God has a sense of humor because everywhere I look I have heard and seen the word JOY. I know it is the season of Joy and it appears more frequently this time of year but I have seen it in the most peculiar places. I have overheard conversations about JOY while standing in the grocery store. While doing some machine embroidery for a gift, I needed and bought an embroidery font from an online store and they gave me a free embroidery design as a gift. I didn’t have to choose it, it just showed up in my online shopping cart. I didn’t have to pay for it, it was their gift to me for being a repeat customer. It was an embroidery design (picture included at the end of this post) that said….JOY. While God was cleansing my heart of joy thieves, He as also gently reminding me to start looking around and I would find JOY without much effort. JOY is a gift. JOY is free. JOY is my heart’s condition and when JOY is absent, I need only look at my own self and seek Jesus more. My picture of JOY may look a little different this year than it has in years past but none the less, JOY abounds all around me. I need to take stock of it.

Today was my turning point. I downloaded that JOY design and embroidered it immediately on a hand towel. My mind is made up to accept things as they are in this current state. I have decided to accept people as people. They will disappoint me just as surely as I will disappoint them but they are not authorized to hold my joy. I have decided to submit to Jesus’ command to love the hard people regardless of how crappy they are to me. I decided to pray harder when I don’t feel like it. I decided to give deeper when I don’t have it to give. And just as my mind changed, my heart changed. JOY is here. Rejoice! Merry Christmas to you and yours and I pray this post finds you in a sweet spirit and in good health. In the comments, let me know if and how I can pray for you.

My 3 tips for thriving in these last days of 2019:

1 – Do not allow people to be the source of your joy

There is only one sure way to be joyful and that is to know peace. I walk daily with the Prince of Peace and He surely points me in the way of His joy, His truths, and His way for my life.

2 – Look around and take inventory

One whole month I kept a gratitude journal. It was amazing to take an inventory of the things I was (and am) grateful for: my health, my family, my friends, my faculties to get outside and walk and enjoy the air that I breath, my sense of smell that allows me to close my eyes and allow an aroma to take me back to pleasant memories, etc, etc.

3 – Do something

The best medicine, besides prayer and time with God, is to get busy. When my mind begins a funk drive and feel like my emotions are drifting off into the ditch, I get busy doing something productive for me or productive for someone else. Like embroidering JOY on a hand towel or taking a walk or taking a meal to a shut in, the act of business can have a positive profound impact on an idle mind.

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Photo by me. I even embroidered in non-traditional Christmas colors using teal instead of green and hot pink instead of maroon. It was a symbol that my picture of Joy may look differently this year than it has in year’s past but Joy it is, none the less. My job is to stay focused and go where God leads no matter the landscape. #faith #trust #follow #joy #embroidery #peace #thieves #gratitudejournal #prayerchangeseverything