Pursuing Joy

I have been a bit overwhelmed of late, way more than my normal.   Seeing old ghosts.  Changing job roles.  Parenting a high schooler and trying to remind my frazzled mother nerves that he will be ok.  Watching friends hearts' break.   Attempting to reconcile the past.  Practicing assertiveness training. Buying a new data plan.  Reading CMS guidelines, coding clinics and best practice guidelines.  Writing what to my small world amounts to a thesis.   Learning that vindictiveness has the same root as  vindicate.  Finding a lost voice.  Practicing loving my spouse and I need to practice as if I was pitching the seventh game of the world series.  Keeping up with a teenager's schedule.   Making friends.  Watching baseball.  Getting new glasses.  Bloodwork again.  Finding a math tutor (and not for me this time!).  Cleaning out closets.  And I forgot in the midst of all this turmoil and change to look for joy.  And so today, in the midst of all my chaos and noise I was reminded again by one of my favorite writers.  I may not share all of her theology but no one writes about joy and grace and the point of it all better.  So I am sharing her thoughts with you and when my noise quites a little and I expect it will by Friday...I will write.

But today just to remind us all why we are here and why pursue Joy:

"How can grace get a hold of you when the past won’t let go of you? How do you leave a legacy different than the one you’ve been left? That’s what I’ve got to gnaw through to. How do mangle the ones you love most?
“Sor…ry… Mama… didn’t… mean… to make you… cry.” And he’s the one who can’t stop.
And I kneel down and let go of his arm. And I hold his face. That’s what I should have done, done right at the beginning. What would happen in a world where anger was your flag to reach out and cup a face?
He looks so scared and wrung and thin — every child’s a thin place.  I see God.
And that’s what comes:
If you don’t fight for joy, it’s your children who lose.
What do I want my children to remember — my joy in clean floors, made beds and ironed shirts — or my joy of the Lord?
You will be most remembered — by what brought you most joy.
The joy of the Lord is your strength and the person of Christ is your unassailable joy – and the battle for joy is nothing less than fighting the good fight of faith.
His cheeks in my palms, they’re so white, so wet.
It’s his eyes — if you’ve put the fear of yourself into a child, how is there room for the joy of the Lord? Joy isn’t an optional feature to the Christian life — it’s the vital feature of the Christian life.
Battle for joy or lose your life. Or other’s lose theirs.
And I whisper sorry. I tell the boy I know nothing yet, nothing.
Every ungracious moment means someone doesn’t understand grace.
And the boy crumbles into me and I hold onto him and a forgiveness I’ll never deserve and there’s a grace that can hold us, that can mold us, the way joy can bend you soft at all the joints.
And I murmur it into the thick of his hair, that even now He can still make us like Him.
The boy touches my cheek like a flag waving yes."  Ann Voskamp