“Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home… it’s your responsibility to love it, or change it.” –Chuck Palahniuk, author
As I sit here, trying to steal some time to myself to write, I hear the escalating voices of my daughters. It seems one cut up another’s picture and then stuffed it under the bed. As I try to concentrate, I feel the frustration mounting in me, feeding on the frustrated voices filling my ears.
Home. Family. Sometimes, joy feels far, far away.
It could be you feel this way each morning when you walk into a hostile work environment. Or during visits with family. Maybe you just feel it as you go through daily life.
Joy is something that we are offered by God as a gift. But that gift isn’t always just sitting there, like a brightly wrapped present under the Christmas tree.
Sometimes, we have to search long and hard to find the joy in our lives.
If you look at your relationships and surroundings, and you aren’t seeing any joy, stop and look again. Buried under a lot of things that layer on each day like dust – rude words, messy spaces, selfish actions – there is something bright and shiny just waiting to be polished off.
It’s joy.
But you won’t find it if you don’t look for it.
What if you can’t find it at all…?
If you’ve looked long and hard and there’s no joy to be found, maybe you’re in the wrong place. Or the wrong job. Or even the wrong relationship.
Friendships start and fizzle. Jobs sound perfect and then turn out less so. We move to our dream home, except it has a bad foundation.
I’m not advocated giving up. Marriages that start with God’s blessing will always have joy, even when the perfection of the honeymoon period wears off. Jobs that answer the call you’ve been given will get hard, but they will never be joyless.
“You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” (Psalm 16:11)
Difficulty is not the same as joylessness.
Sometimes the struggle is what unearths the joy. It’s the finding process on steroids. But when you do find joy in the things that made you angry, frustrated, or sad, it’s all the more lovely.
Life is full of choices and we sometimes veer off course in our hurry to get somewhere or be something – whether it was for us or not. If you can’t find the joy in these things, you may have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Pray for discernment. For guidance. And for strength to make the changes that put you on the right path. The path to finding joy in your everyday life.
Have a blessed Monday!
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