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JOY Is A Choice

joy, reflections 1.10.2016
Today marks the three-year anniversary of a horrible head-on collision that left me physically broken in two places and emotionally broken into many more pieces than that. Sometimes I feel like I'm still in recovery; other times I feel like I'm doing okay navigating my new normal. One of the lessons I learned through that whole ordeal is that JOY is a choice. Every day. So today's post is a preview of a message I've been invited to share at our Community Prayer Breakfast first thing tomorrow morning.

My message ~ Inspiring JOY ~ will be simple but powerful:

Look up. In a broken world, we will only heal and thrive when we fix our eyes on our higher power and draw our strength from that omniscient, omnipotent and omni-present Source.

Look around: Our world is a better place when we lead with a servant heart. What needs do we see in others and how can we fill them?

Look in: What can we do for ourselves so that we are fed physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually? We simply cannot serve from an empty vessel.

There you have it:  J ~ O ~ Y.
It's a choice.

For homework, I'm going to encourage our youth to name three people in their lives whom they promise to reach out to when life gets dark and their joy is threatened, like what happened to me in that wreck three years ago. Above all, I want them to know that they are surrounded by people who love and care about them. And that joy is a choice and always, always within reach. If you're in the Houston area, join us tomorrow morning at 6:30 am in the Friendswood High School cafeteria.