Finding Joy

Just having got back from a trip in Florida to swim with manatees, I feel like my heart could burst with joy. I’m still coming down from the high of swimming with such majestic, playful, incredible animals. They are like giant puppies of the sea and my heart is hooked on them. I currently feel so thankful and at no surprise having just had this incredible week with them, as well as even more incredible people. However, upon talking to a very close friend of mine about the subject of joy, it made me realize that what I am experiencing isn’t just a circumstantial feeling of happiness that comes and goes. 

It’s stemming from what I’ve been learning lately about tapping into my heart and truly living from it. I’ve been realizing (much through the help of an incredible book I’ve been going through called Waking the Dead by John Eldridge) that our heart is the key to living a full life, and fully embracing the joy we were meant to experience. I’ve come to realize in the past few years that I have a very tender heart and I’ve come to appreciate it and no longer shy away from it, or be embarrassed about it. Yes, I cry at commercials, the NFL draft, and of course over manatees. But that’s a good thing and I’ve realized it’s an ability to tap into my heart completely and experience joy on an extreme level. Being vulnerable and open to those feelings and not cutting them off, to seem like I’ve got it all together (as I’ve done for many years before), has opened up a store house of immense thankfulness…which has led directly to immense joy. 

Yes I am super blessed and thankful to have swam with manatees and experienced great fellowship in Crystal River. However, the level of joy that has come from that thankfulness is more on par with having won the lottery and seen a real live unicorn in one day. My conversation with my friend made me realize that the more I’ve been tapping into my heart, the more I’ve been able to see the many blessings around me (big AND small) to the point of overflowing with thankfulness leading to extreme joy. 

For example, I’ve never been a bird person. I didn’t even like birds. I thought they were gross. However, in the past year or so I have come to appreciate them flitting around our backyard and bathing in our bird bath to the point that I am so thankful when those sweet little birds appear in our yard now that I could almost cry (and have a few times). I’m filled with a joy that is unexplainable and that only a year or two ago I wouldn’t have experienced at all because I hadn’t tapped into the full potential of my heart and thankfulness. Now I see a bird and I’m filled with a similar feeling as though I just received an award or got a hug from a long lost friend. And it fills my thankfulness and joy to overflowing. 

Even sunsets lately have been overwhelming to me at times. I’ve always loved sunsets. They’re beautiful. Most people would agree. But lately, when I see a sunset I am literally moved almost to tears. It feels like it’s a personal gift to my heart and I am filled with an overwhelming sense of thankfulness and joy as though I were the only person on the planet experiencing it. I’ve been watching sunsets my whole life and have never felt these feelings until this past year or so. It’s crazy. But I love it. 

I’ve had a hard time explaining this lately because I knew I was experiencing many highs and feelings of blessings, but also am very familiar to what it feels like not to experience that at all. I’m very familiar with seasons of disappointment, depression, and loneliness to name a few. Those are very real and difficult circumstances. However, I feel like this new found tapping into my heart is awakening me to the realization that joy doesn’t have to be completely circumstantial. It can be, but it shouldn’t always stem from there. I experience joy when I feel thankful for something. And I feel thankful for something when I allow my heart to focus on any and every thing that is good, true, beautiful, and right in my life and the world. I need to not gloss over things so quickly and take the time to allow my heart to be thankful. I need to remember to look and dwell on the positive things in life, and focus my energy on being thankful for them so that joy has the opportunity to overflow. God’s blessings are all around us just waiting to be noticed, be thankful for, and then fill us up with joy overflowing.  

"Every good and perfect gift is from above." James 1:17

"For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the 
giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God." 

2 Corinthians 4:15

"In everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 
1 Thessalonians 5:18

(This was originally written in January)