When Joy Eludes Us

Joy is a funny thing. I'm coming to realize that there are certainly moments of random and even surprising happiness in life, happiness that comes into our lives without having much to do with it ourselves. But joy is a little different. Joy, a calm and contented and happy sense that life is good and we are good and God is most certainly very good, needs perhaps to be more intentionally sought after. Joy seems more and more to me to be a choice.

But even after this realization, I was still struggling. If joy was a choice, why couldn't I just choose it and feel it? Why couldn't I wake up and say, "Even when things go wrong today, I am going to remain positive about my circumstances and grateful for my life and, in short, joyful"? And after saying that to myself, why couldn't I follow through and make myself feel joyful even in the midst of misfortune. Because, friends: I couldn't. I come to you now and admit to you that after months and months of trying to consciously choose joy and coax, or more often force, myself to feel it, joy still eluded me almost every single day.

A friend today told me to pray over Psalm 34, and I am so glad I did. As I read, I realized that as I have perceived myself to be failing to feel joy, I have moved further and further away from God. I mistakenly believed that God would be somehow upset with me if I couldn't be grateful and happy and joyful for all the good things He has done for me. If I couldn't come to Him in praise and thanksgiving, did He really want me to come to Him at all? Did He really want to listen to me complaining about all the petty negative things, as well as the majorly negative things, going on in my life? Didn't He want me to overcome these negative things, find joy in the positive, and come to Him in praise of it?

Well, ideally, yes. But that is not all that God wants. I remembered today that He is also there for us in the broken times, the sad times, and the desperate times.

"In my misfortune I called,

the Lord heard and saved me from all distress."

In my prayer, I felt God reaching out to me and telling me, "Welcome back, little lost one. Welcome back, my daughter. You have tried so hard to please me with your joy, but don't you know that I am the source of all joy? Thank you for your effort. Let me take it from here."

Somehow, I had become very wrong-headed in my thinking. I had forgotten an entire aspect of prayer: the anguished petition. I was still praying quick prayers like, "Please keep me safe in this situation." And as I mentioned, I was still saying prayers of thanksgiving, but those were becoming fewer and farther between as I felt less and less able to feel any sort of happiness and felt more and more ashamed of my inability to force myself to feel happy. Today, I prayed a true prayer of anguish: "Why, God? I don't have anything to say other than 'Why am I so sad?'" (followed by far too much to put here haha). And sure enough, God reached out because:

"The Lord is close to the broken-hearted,

saves those whose spirit is crushed."

I realized that God has been next to me all throughout my time of suffering these past two years. He has walked beside me, but I forgot to reach out. I tried to do everything myself, and as it became clearer and clearer that I couldn't, I became more and more frustrated and ashamed and therefore less able to pray. What a terrible cycle.

This is the start of a new journey, and I am sure that this post has made very little sense. I am also sure that this current line of thinking will need to be tweaked as I move forward. But it's a start.

I have realized today that I can choose to try to view things in a positive way. I can try not to dwell on negative things. But try as I might, I cannot force myself to feel happiness or joy because I am not meant to be able to do it on my own. That is where God (and also a good counselor, for anyone with mental health issues who might be reading this) comes in. If I keep up an open dialogue with God, if I am honest about how I am feeling, if I am not ashamed of my suffering but instead use it to build a stronger relationship with God, He will move the spirit within me that is responsible for joy. It is a partnership between Him and me. And I am happy to say that He and I will work together toward, if not days of infinite happiness, days of a deep and contented joy.

Chin up, friends. Even if you don't feel like smiling now, have faith that you will soon.
(Also hello. Realized I hadn't put a current picture up in three years...)

I Choose to Be Here

I was reading a selection from 2 Samuel today (2 Samuel 15-16) and had a thought I wanted to share. I hope that you're all in happy, wonderful places in your lives. I hope you love where you are emotionally and physically. I hope you love the place where you live. I hope you love where you are with your love life, your career, your family life, and your spiritual life. But if you don't, I hope you choose to be there anyway, at least for now. Let me explain.

In 2 Samuel 15:19-20, David says to Ittai the Gittite, "Why should you go also with us? Go back and stay with the king, for you are a foreigner and you, too, are an exile from your own country. You came only yesterday, and shall I have you wander about with us today, wherever I have to go? Return and take your brothers with you, and may the Lord be kind and faithful to you." David and his people are on the run, and he knows it is going to be difficult. He turns to the man next to him who doesn't really owe him any loyalty and essentially "lets him off the hook." David says, "Look...you don't have to come with us. It's going to be hard. I give you my blessing to turn back and leave us behind."

But what does Ittai do? You guessed it. He doesn't turn back. Instead he replies in 2 Samuel 15:21, "As the Lord lives, and as my lord the king lives, your servant shall be wherever my lord the king may be, whether for death or for life." Basically, he says, "Thanks, but I choose to be here with you, even if it is going to be difficult. Because where you are, there also is God."

That got me thinking a little bit. How often when I am "let off the hook," do I actually do as Ittai did and choose to remain in the difficult situation anyway? Not very often, I can tell you. I am much more likely to pray for a quick exit from a tough situation - and to take that exit opportunity if it comes - than to stick it out and look for God in it.

Please don't get me wrong, though. Sometimes it is necessary to get ourselves out of difficult situations. (This is especially the case if there is abuse or something going on. Please don't remain in an abusive situation.) But I am realizing that sometimes, being in a difficult situation is actually a blessing; it is a chance to find God and to choose to be with Him through thick and thin. God won't let us remain in that difficult situation forever. But perhaps if we choose to patiently stick it out with Him just a little bit longer than we otherwise would have, we will come to know Him - and to know ourselves - just a little bit better.

A New Year

Tea with the Family to Ring in the New Year!!! Here's to the best year yet.

Hello friends. I highly doubt that anyone is still reading this blog since it has been two and a half years, but it's a new year, and I miss blogging so much that I need to get back to it. See, the last year wasn't spectacular. Sure, there were absolutely wonderful moments. I met a new best friend. I became a godmother. I continued building my teaching skills and confidence in the classroom. But unfortunately, I had to leave the school sooner than expected, which was very difficult,  and I have spent the last few months working out a plan b. (It's still a work in progress haha.) 

But as I discern that plan, I am determined to make this the best year yet. I am turning a new page, and the last few months of 2017 are not going to cloud my 2018. One of my resolutions to make 2018 a happier year is to return to my blog. Apart from missing my blogging friends and from missing this rather unique way of processing and understanding my life, you know what really made me want to start blogging again? The fact that I read this beautiful quotation about the new year when I was reading a short story by Charles Dickens last week, and I thought how some of you probably would have really appreciated it. So...if anyone is still here, here you go:

"So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy." 

- Charles Dickens, "The Chimes"

What will you do to make this year happier for those who depend on you for happiness? What can we all do to make sure that those struggling still feel joy in the New Year that God has created for them? How can we help each other to make this a happy year for us all? These are the questions I'm pondering this first week of 2018. Care to ponder with me?

Words for Monday Morning

Hello there! Sorry the blogging hiatus there; things have been pretty crazy leading up to the first week of school. But finally, at long last, it is here. Tonight is our Open House, and Thursday is the first day of school. And because this promises to be an exciting yet probably challenging week, I thought I'd share some of the words that are giving me comfort today, just in case you need to hear them too.

My God is the rock where I take refuge;

my shield, my mighty help, my stronghold.

~ Ps 18:3

He lifts us up, and in Him we can do anything! Join me in making this a great week??

A gorgeous Catholic shrine near my house in Wisconsin

Book 2: The Secret Garden

Back to the books! At this rate, it'll take me a year to tell you all about those ten books I'd like on my bookshelf. But, I hope you don't mind?

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out this Tuesday Teatime: Ten Books.

I don't actually have that much to say about The Secret Garden because it was circumstance rather than the story that really made it a memorable book for me. 

When I was five, I started playing 'school' outside, using a tree as a 'chalkboard' and a little twig as a pointer. My parents saw how much I loved it, so by the time I was seven, they had helped me set up a little school room in the house, complete with a chalkboard and easel, a globe, a little yellow student's desk that I used as a teacher's desk, and a plethora of accessories like chalk, a clipboard, and fake passes to the bathroom and the nurse. I would set up my dolls, or when I was luckier my sister and neighbors, and begin teaching whatever I had learned in school that day.

For whatever reason, The Secret Garden somehow ended up in this school room. Most of the rest of our books were kept in bookshelves in our bedrooms, and while I very easily could have gone and grabbed one, I opted for the path of least resistance and used the book that had somehow ended up in the room with me. So the children's abridged and illustrated version of The Secret Garden was the first book I ever 'taught.' I read it aloud to my 'class' and asked them questions about it; I dreamt up projects that they could do on the characters and plot; I made up spelling and vocabulary lists from it. And now, almost seventeen years later, I am a real English teacher. I'm not teaching The Secret Garden this year, but I know I'll get just as much joy from teaching this year's books as I did seventeen long years ago teaching The Secret Garden to my dolls.

I've come a long way from that little makeshift school room. Finally out in Wisconsin about to embark on my first real teaching job (no longer a student teacher or assistant teacher as I have been the past two years,) I had the true joy of seeing my classroom for the first time the other day. There's no little yellow teacher's desk, but I think I'll make do ;)

Tuesday Teatime: What are you learning?

Hi everybody! In honor of the upcoming school year, today I'm reflecting on what I've been learning lately and wondering what you've been learning.

To New Beginnings

Well, it's a new week, friends, and I'm in an entirely new and unknown part of the country. Would you pray for me as I take this leap of faith? And I, as always, will be praying for you - especially for any new beginnings you may be undertaking.

Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly,

and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

2 Corinthians 9:6

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Goethe

Boldness, be my friend.

Shakespeare - Cymbeline

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

C.S. Lewis

Massachusetts to Connecticut to New York to Pennsylvania to Ohio to Indiana to Illinois to....Wisconsin!!