Joy. What goes through your mind when you read that word? Did
you nod your head and smile with the thought of the overflowing joy you have in
your heart and life? Or did you shake your head and say to yourself, I wish had some of that!
Joy.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as a “feeling of great happiness.” Not
just your usual happiness, mind you, but “great” happiness. And they define happy as “feeling pleasure and enjoyment
because of your life, situation, etc.; or showing or causing feelings of
pleasure and enjoyment.” It’s something we seem to long for and often find
evasive. If we find it, we want to hang onto it, which evidently isn’t easy to
do. Even King David cried out to God to restore to him the joy of his
salvation. The kind of joy that makes you breathless and giddy. The kind of joy
that prompted my cousin to say, “Even the air smells different!” at the moment
she surrendered to God and He penetrated her heart.
But, eventually, life, your
circumstances or others can suck the joy right out of you. Or is it you letting
those circumstances and people steal it from you? Certainly heart-crushing
grief can deplete and smother it. That’s understandable. But a lot of us,
especially in the developed Western world—where we really do have life too easy
and often have too much time on our hands and waste time sitting around
comparing ourselves to others, wishing we had what they had, and convincing
ourselves that no one has ever had it as bad as we do and that nobody understands
our pain, etc.—find joy elusive, even though we’ve had it before and know how
to get it back. (How’s that for a run-on
sentence of complaints?)
But it’s not necessarily just joy recovery that I want to address today, although that is a by-product of
following through on the advice another writer gives in a post I’ll be providing a link to.
What I want to address today
is the effect our joyless lives, attitudes and demeanors have on our family and friends, or even those we just happen to come into contact with
on a daily basis. They can become the collateral damage of your joyless attitude.
I have a friend who is angry about
life. I can tell this person is angry and joyless just from the attitude they
have toward everyone—family members, and even strangers. And that attitude threatens
to suck the joy out of everyone who comes in contact with them.
In this post I’ve linked to, you’ll
read about how one woman’s lack of joy affected her children. Sadly, I can
relate. I remember the time my older son (who was probably ten at the time)
bounced happily out to the kitchen one morning to bless me with a cheery good
morning and a beatific smile. He had always been a smiley, “Wow-it’s-a-new-day-and-isn’t-life-great”
kind of kid, even from birth, and that morning was no different.
And how did I respond? I greeted him
with some ridiculously harsh, snappy comment like “Did you make your bed yet?”
I can only imagine the look on my face when I spat out the question. And I can
still hear and see his response. His
smile withered in a split second, and was replaced by a pained expression. His
shoulders slumped, and I can still hear the words he mumbled as he turned and
started back toward his bedroom: “Why did I even get out of bed this morning!?”
That vision of my son still breaks
my heart. I was suffering from frustration and joylessness in my life at that
time, and I took it out on him. And, I’m sure, nearly everyone around me, which
certainly didn’t do anything to help my joyless life become more joyful. It
just made everyone want to avoid me. It would take gratitude, a lot of prayer
and a change of attitude to correct it.
And it still takes a change of
attitude—and behavior—because I still struggle with moments of joyless living.
But, after years of experience, there are two things I do when joylessness
strikes: First, I look to the heavens and say, “Oh, Lord, restore unto me the
joy of my salvation. And then I smile in gratitude, because I know He’s
faithful, and He’ll answer that prayer.
Because a joyful life is part of His
plan for his children. And in His presence, there is a fullness of it!
Next week: Does
God want you to be happy?
You bet He does!
Until next week,
Thanks for
joining me!
Blessings,
Andrea
photo
credit: <a
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/42246573@N00/8620156555">Eggs
in bowties</a> via <a
href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a
href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>
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