Where is your joy?

I’ve been struggling with joy lately. It would seem the daily grind, growing older, stress, situations and, well, “life” have made it feel like jumping into a roller coaster of emotions. Up and down, round and round. The hills are great, the valleys are not. In my devotional time this morning, I was reminded of a quote by John Ortberg from his book “The Life You’ve Always Wanted” regarding our need to find a “Joy Mentor”.

We need to identify a few people who play this role in our lives-especially if we tend to be joy-challenged. Make a joy appointment to spend some time with such a person this week. We need to spend regular and significant amounts of time around life-enhancing, joy-producing people.

Over the weekend we spent oodles of time together as a family as we usually do. While the weekend was filled with baseball games and places to be and things to do, we still found time to be with one another. Yesterday, just before the kids headed off to AWANA for the evening, we were all around the island in the kitchen enjoying a meal. As usual, I had the radio on blasting the local adult contemporary music as some background noise to our meal. It was when the song “Your Smiling Face” by James Taylor came on that I received a dose of joy.

As the song rang through the house, I broke into my best American Idol and began to serenade our youngest. Later “Just the Way You Are” by Billy Joel provided a moment for my middle daughter and I to share a daddy-daughter dance. I got a lump in my throat as I sang the words in her ear to affirm to her that I love her just the way she is. Small moments, but lasting memories.

Today is a Monday. If I needed a reminder at all, I just had to open my inbox, listen to a few conference calls and begin “running the numbers”. Yep, it’s Monday. Let’s take a moment today to identify those people, those moments that bring us joy. Visit those moments often. Tell those people specifically.

Your turn….where is your joy?