Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

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JOYFUL

For the last three days days I’ve driven past a giant billboard advertising a local radio station. It reads Find Joy, and as much as I agree that joy matters, I don’t think it is something we go out and find elsewhere.

That’s not how joy works.

Choosing to live a joyful life can only happen in the midst of where we are, and if we can’t find it in the here and now, we won’t find it in the there and then.

If we have to search for anything, it is to find cause for joy in the midst of our circumstances, and there are times when that is a damn tall order. It can feel almost impossible to uncover the joy buried beneath the layers of loss, heartache, grief, and fear, not to mention the drudgery of an ordinary day. But if we are to live joyful lives, our task is to mine for it wherever we find ourselves.

Joy is not out there.

It’s right here.