Snapshots of Joy

Unless you’ve been living under a rock most of your life, you hear sayings like:

Show of hands – when you hear these “words of wisdom”, does a little man with an angry fist inside your head scream, “Shhh!"

If not, we cannot be friends. 

(kidding.)

Seriously though, we all have issues we deal with on the daily basis. I mean, after all, that’s life, right? And the older (and I dare add ‘more mature’) that we all get, the wiser we become. We realize that life isn’t fair and that both wonderful and crummy things happen to us.

Well, the past year of my family’s life has been quite crummy to say the least. We’ve had better seasons of life, and we’ve had more tragic seasons of life. But, this has by far been the crummiest, toughest season.

For my family, the crummy season started back at the end of August 2016, when three weeks into a new school year, Jude stated having seizures. And since that August, it never really let up for what my children have endured.

As I was going through the start of this crummy season, it was easy to get burdened and depressed about the events surrounding us. One morning, I was praying over the desks of where my students sat before the school day began when a thought occurred to me...

I should find one thing each day that brings me joy, 

a daily blessing of sort, 

and stop to take a 'mental Polaroid' of it in my mind.

It’s a simple revelation, I know. 

But, it’s one that became life altering for me! I began that day. 

It’s interesting how such a simple thing can really change perspective and help keep me in check.

I admit that it hasn’t always been easy. There’s been days where I think that life stinks, and I struggle to find the joys of life. 

Or days that I come back to the same 'joy Polaroid snapshot' again and again because I'm just trying to survive the day. (It’s usually a mental picture of my half-made comfy bed at the end of a long day at work.)

Over time though, what I have discovered is that more things bring me joy than I originally realized. I have never stopped to focus on the positives. It's way too easy to get absorbed in the negatives of life. I've had to train my mind to overcome these harmful, pessimistic thoughts.

It’s been close to a year since I started this mental exercise. Some of the things on my list include:

• Watching my students develop a love for literacy before my very eyes
• A word of encouragement (my love language) from an administrator
• Jude’s hugs
• Sunlight flickering through really cool trees (I have a thing for trees.)
• Jacob telling a story (He's quite animated!)
• Hitting a green light at the right time when driving
• Seeing the “full” light when I fill my car’s tank with gas

You get the picture.

As you can see, these things aren’t large by the world’s standards of “Grand Achievements” or “Lifetime Moments”, but they’re all important in their own way. They cause me to smile, breathe, and in that moment, think positively. They all have meanings behind them that I associate with the blessings I see in my everyday life.

My daily "joy Polaroid snapshots” are the sugar to life’s lemonade I’ve made with the lemons that have been thrown my way. Because as they say: