Joy?

As I have said in the last few enteries, the family has been sick...not much joy in that. I don't know why God allows hard times to come in multiples. I think it was yesterday that I just felt flattened by a hopless feeling. I was probably tired from being sick and looking after the kids, but to say I was sad would be an understatment. All day God was saying to me, " Amie choose joy." It took for a good 24 hours to take him up on the suggestion. I'm not going to pretend that choosing joy is easy, that life can always look better, that it's never all that bad. Sometimes, life does seem bleak, lost, and hopeless. Those are real feelings, but that's all they are. Choosing joy is the same as choosing sadness. Feelings are not situations, and circumstances, which are real and can be devastating. So as far as I can decern I can choose my emotions in every situation. Why choose sadness? it's easier. It looks like the looming situation. Joy in the face of tragedy doesn't look right, doesn't feel right...at first. But the sadness eats us, and deforms us...Joy builds, strengthens and renews. I don't know...I'm still firguring it out for myself. Think I'm on the right track?
this song has been a challenge to me...I hope it encourages you to higher heights of JOY.

Live

Did you come that we might just survive?

Did you come so we could just get by?

Did you walk among us so we might merely limp along beside?

I was bound, I have been set free

But I have settled for apathy

Did you come to make me new

And know I'd crawl right back into the skin you found me in?

It's where I am, not where I'm been

You make me want to love

You make me want to live

You came to shake us and to wake us up to something more

than we'd always settled for

And you make me want to live

so why would a young man

Live in a waste land

When the castle of his dreams is standing by

Why would a princess

Put on an old dress

To dance whith her beloved and the chance to catch his eye.

Nicole Noredman Brave 2005