I have been pondering on "JOY" lately and in the past few weeks, I keep having the word show up in songs, shows, text, pictures, songs I have been listening to, and songs I have been singing.
I had a cousin send me a picture of her on her vacation standing in front of a stained glass window that had "joy" in it. She Skyped me last night, and we talked about Joy for a long time. She shared that she has a little note on her computer to "Protect my Joy" as she feels that if you don't have joy in your world, you won't have any to share with others.
Joy is my middle name and my mother shared that it was something she KNEW needed to be MY name. She told me that when my older sister was born, she thought, this isn't "insert my name and middle name" so she held onto the name and when I was born, she said she saw me and knew that I was the one that was to be named with that name.
I don't know why I needed a specific name, but I had been pondering about it for about a month and a half and was praying during a sacrament portion of the Sunday services at church. I believe that God is my Father in Heaven and that He is loving and Kind, and wants my happiness.
I was praying saying that I wasn't feeling "joy" in my life recently, but that I was just doing what I felt needed to be done. I was doing what others needed from me and being so tired and not feeling well, it has been hard to find the "joy" that I believe HE wants for each of us. The answer I feel He gave me, was that my middle name wasn't "Joy" because I would always have joy, but because I would bring Joy to others. When I pondered on this, I believe it is true. I find the most joy in my life through serving and bringing Joy to others.
Fast forward to this morning. Our church choir was singing an Easter medley and it was a compilation of three or four Easter Hymns. There was the mention of Joy three times in the songs and at the top where it tells you how to sing it said, "Joyfully" at the top on several pages. I have practiced that song several times and didn't notice it until today while singing it. Even while singing it, I didn't notice that it said "sing joyfully" until the choir director pointed it out for the choir to sing it "joyfully!"
I leave that meeting and head to our woman's meeting and on the board at the front are four flowers and on the center of the first flower is the word "JOY" and I laughed and asked the teacher after the lesson mentioning "JOY" if I can have the flower. I show it and share about it in my video below. I then cut the word "Joy" out in the center circle so I can put it on my current gratitude frame.
I get home, take a short nap, get up and make some lunch after a wonderful video chat with my girls and grandchildren. I decided to watch "The Office" on netflix as the new shows are so horrible with so much swearing or adult content and so I started watching yesterday and just having it playing while getting my meals ready and eating them. I am eating my meal and up comes an episode Season 1, Episode 4 called "The Alliance" and about half way through, Michael says, "That doesn't bring Happiness. You know what does? JOY!"
I couldn't believe it as I had already decided to write my blog on Joy anyway but I thought that was so funny that all of those things happened today. I do believe that my Heavenly Father wants me to find happiness. I had been pondering during church about how you could help people "find" that joy. I share on the video how I believe if you ask people of different ages what brings them joy, the younger will name "things" that money can buy. I think the older you get, the more your family brings you joy.
It would be interesting to take kids and have them do service and then give them the thing they said would bring them "joy" at the beginning and see after the service which brought them more joy. I then looked up how many times "Joy" is in the scriptures. In the King James Bible, it is mentioned just under 200 times.
Anyway, I include more on the video I made about this, but I just wanted to share that I believe that Joy is created by individuals for themselves by doing service and taking care of their own needs and that unless you are filled, there isn't much you can share.
I hope you have a JOYful and Blessed Day!
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