Friday, September 16, 2011

Happy Happy Joy Joy

It’s Friday! Today will be my 1st attempt to link up and try something out of the ordinary—it’s 5 Minute Friday. So after my brief (or not) rambling introduction, I’m going to try to pour out my heart for 5 minutes on the topic of “joy.” Oddly enough, I almost got out of bed last night and wrote a post about joy before I knew about 5MF. Ultimately, I decided that my bed was warm, my laptop was in the kitchen, and I was lazy. Before I get started, and before you read it, can you do something for me? Go meet Sara. You can thank me later.

I’m still new in the blog world and I like to hop around and read different blogs. Reading tons of posts really helps me be me. Sometimes I can read a snippet of something and my brain just takes off in a completely different direction. If I were better and more disciplined at putting my thoughts on paper/computer screen, I could come up with a pages-long post most days. But I’m not there yet. Anyway, I digress. I’m a bit addicted to Twitter and a couple of days ago I kept seeing tweets about Sara. Everyone was praying for her, cheering her on, and just gathering together for her. It piqued my curiosity and I found her. And I’m so glad I did. Please take a few minutes, or hours, or days to read her story, bookmark her blog, and pray for her. In honor of Sara, I choose joy.

And my 5 minutes begins…now.

I have never given much thought to the difference in happiness and joy, until now. Now this is not a scientific or expert opinion, I’m not even consulting the dictionary for accurate definitions. If I did, I might find that I was off the mark with my thoughts, and that just won’t work for 5MF. To me, happiness is how you feel about what is going on around you. It’s about your situation, your family, your job, your life in general. Being happy, well, sometimes that takes work. You can be happy or you can choose to be happy, despite your situation. But it isn’t easy. I have tried. Sometimes, your situation just brings you down, no matter what you try to do or think. But joy is different. Joy comes from what is going on inside of you, not what’s going on outside of you. Joy is a reflection of your heart. True joy comes from knowing your Creator and your Savior; from knowing that you have something better waiting for you. Joy is the direct result of the choice you make to fill your heart with God. Happiness comes and goes, but joy remains with you, just like God. When He fills your life, He brings joy with Him. And He comes to stay. 

So that's it. 5 minutes of writing, not too much editing, just writing. And since I still have an empty space in my brain when it comes to formatting and all things that make blogs pretty, if you see a weird something on here that doesn't make sense, just ignore it. I'm *trying* to link up and stick a 5MF button on my page. If you see it and it looks normal, you can safely assume that the empty space in my brain is shrinking, even if ever so slowly. If not, just say "bless her heart" and pray that someday, I will get it.

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