Choose Joy

Do you ever have moments where clear perspective is dropped in front of you and you just have to laugh? I had this happen recently at a yoga class.

Since January, it seems like one person in my household has been sick.  Each of us, myself included, had head colds that took weeks to kick. My dog sprained his tail somewhere during that time.  Our youngest daughter started coming into our room every night and would only go back to sleep if snuggled between my husband and I, which inevitably meant that one of us was slightly sleep deprived in the morning from a tiny foot in our back or stiff shoulder from the little snuggle bug wanting to be as close to us as possible in a king sized bed. Add in my never ending navigation of managing chronic pain with my pelvic congestion syndrome, and boy, the story in my head every day upon waking up since the new year was that it was going to be another hard day. 

Now if you’ve ever been in this cycle before where everything seems hard, you also know how hard it is to break out of the cycle. The negative neuropathways in our brains are often hardwired from life experiences of trying to fit in by commiserating over drama, pain, or gossip. I hadn’t realized how far deep into my negative story I had gotten. Then one morning, my kids were finally on the mend and I was able to drag myself to the yoga studio for a 6 am class.  Still fully congested from a cold that turned into a sinus infection, I hit my mat and thought, “just get through this and you’ll feel better.” There was no motivation other than that…to just get through it. 

Then, boom, the teacher started sharing the message of the class, and suddenly I was laughing at myself. The message that day was to find joy each day. No matter what is happening, find joy. God put those words in my ears for certain that day. As the teacher pushed us through a challenging ab sequence of class, I couldn’t help but laugh. And it felt so good. All of the sudden, the weight I’d been carrying from the months of challenges lifted. I could see clearly that not every day had been “bad” since the beginning of the year, challenging yes, but not all bad. For example, I took the girls to Florida for a Disney trip during that time and enjoyed beautiful sunshine and family time, and no one was sick for that bit. I wrapped up my 200 hour yoga teacher training and now can officially teach yoga. We went to “Ice Cream for Breakfast Day”, a favorite tradition for our family, and had new friends over for pizza night one weekend. There were birthday celebrations for my kids as they both reached another trip around the sun (how have I been a mom for 5 years already?!). There was joy sprinkled in every day, I just had been focused on the hard. 

I share all this to say, hard seasons are going to happen. You might be in one right now. I offer you the option to choose joy. Right now. Find something in your life that lights up your soul and celebrate it. Smile to yourself, laugh out loud. Do whatever you need to do to open that door and let the light flood in that comes with joy. Like the sunrise breaking through the darkest part of night. We all need a little perspective sometimes to remind us that it is ok to be in a hard season, and still look for joy, and then welcome joy into our hearts. The hard doesn’t go away, but it certainly becomes a lighter load to bear.