He Knows (Part 3)

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I took a big sigh and shoved another spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s in my mouth.  It was a Friday night when my friends were all out.  My date was the tub of cookie dough ice cream melting next to me in my bed along with whatever FBI, action-packed Netflix show I was hooked on at the time.  Admit it.  You’ve done it too.  I think we’ve all done it at some point.  I was definitely throwing myself a pity party.

I was wrestling with a rough semester in my past and a scary looking semester in my future.  I felt stuck in a rut I didn’t know how to dig my way out of.  So, I caved to feeling pathetic, and I buried my head in the cycle of feeling sorry for myself.  It’s an all-too-easy reaction to seasons when I feel stuck and it becomes a routine response when things don’t go my way.

If I wanted life to look any different in the upcoming spring semester, I needed to change my perspective. 

I needed to choose joy.

Choosing joy sounds like an easy and fun thing to do.  At first, it sounds like “Just be happy and things will get better!”  Well what do I do when I don’t know how to make things better?  I’m naturally an overly optimistic person so happiness is something I have never had to work on.  None of it made sense to me, but I was finding that joy and happiness are two different things.  Happiness is circumstantial; joy is not.  

Choosing joy has less to do with a circumstance and more to do with a perspective.

I asked myself what I wanted joy to look like in my life.  Joy is walking away from myself and my circumstances and walking in the freedom that comes with surrender to God.  Joy is seeing the big picture from an eternal perspective, not just my perspective.  Joy is letting go of what I think should happen and trusting God with what He has already worked out to happen.

When I choose to be joyful, I’m choosing to take my eyes off of the things going wrong in life and lifting my eyes to an in-control, all-knowing God who created the universe and created me, too.  I’m choosing to praise Him despite the storm and find the blessings despite the circumstance.  I’m choosing peace over confusion and freedom over limitations.

I choose to not find importance in what the world says is valuable because I find my confidence in the One who made the world.  I choose to shift my perspective to one of thankfulness and intentionality.  I choose to see the blessings in every aspect of my day and experience the joy in gratitude- because I found that it’s almost impossible to have joy without gratitude.

The word “choose” carries a lot of importance in the phrase itself.  If I just focus on the “joy” part, I’m completely missing the big picture.  I have to CHOOSE joy because joy is not something that just comes when I want it to.  It’s not an emotion I can just say I want to have and then have it.  I have to intentionally choose to wake up every day and make the decision that I want to live the best I can to serve others and find joy in a million little things.

And that’s exactly what I started doing.  I started looking for a million little reasons to be joyful instead of only looking for one big reason.  I started finding joy in the ordinary, everyday things. 

Like when I wake up and my roommate has two pastries waiting on the counter for me.  Or when I feel overwhelmed with assignments and a friend texts me that I was on her mind and she’s praying for me (those are the moments you know are from God!).  Or when my little sister calls and asks for my advice when I haven’t talked to her in a while.  Or when my favorite Sara Evans song comes on in the Starbucks I do my homework in and I can sing along without even caring that the girl next to me is giving me the look.  Or I could just go to Chick-fil-A- I think that solves everything too.

It also helps when I take the focus off of myself and put it onto other people.

When my friend tells me that she’s having a hard day, I can intentionally choose to drop what I’m doing and listen.  I can send an encouraging text to my friend who is stressed about an exam and let them know I’m praying for it.  I can write out encouraging scripture on a card and leave it on my neighbor’s door.  I can spend quality time grabbing dinner to catch up with a friend I haven’t talked to in a few weeks because schedules got busy.  Kindness goes a long way in making an impact on others and myself. (Read more about the importance of kindness here!)

I have to make the intentional decision to choose the better things in life and forget the lesser things.  I have to choose to have a big-picture mindset instead of a small, selfish mindset.  And I have to remember that there is a purpose I have in being where God has placed me.

I chose joy my spring semester.  And that made all the difference.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
James 1:2-4

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