Choosing joy

If you are reading this chances are you've been through trials and test. If you haven't, please share your secret! Anyway, tonight I was thinking about how I feel right now. How I'm just surviving most days, just barely above the water. I have good days, yes. Lots of them. Today has been a survival day. As I was rocking Dalton to sleep I started thinking about the difference between people who are living with joy and peace and the people, eh hem, me, who have just been surviving. If you are reading this, I'll assume you are living and I'll also assume you've got a list of things you have survived whether it be physically, emotionally, mentally but guess what?! You made it! Guess what else?! There will be more stuff! There's always going to be something that comes along that tries to take our abundant life, our joy! What I'm saying to myself and what I'm saying to you is that we need to buckle down and everyday, choose joy! How much better would our life be if even in the midst of hard times, we chose joy. It would change us and it would change people around us. I honestly haven't even wanted to be around myself lately but I'm going to try and make that change to choose joy, choose abundant life for me and my family! The way to do that is found in God's word. The way to do that begins with being thankful for what we have. Enter with the password "thank you." (Psalms 100:4) Joy is strength and we all could use that in this world filled with so many challenges.

“Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭2:14-16‬ ‭MSG‬‬