Still I have joy

We are two weeks in and I can feel it. The little bit of fall blues. I love the fall, really I do. The cool, crisp air. The new school supplies and rainy days that make us take a break. But I have been feeling a little blueish, maybe a tad overwhelmed.

It's the same every year. I make plans and get excited. Then, when we get started, reality meets idealism. People wake up grumpy, people don't like their math, people wish we could read a different book, people don't have anything clean to wear.

I did have an epiphany this week though. It is NOT my job to make my kids happy at every turn. It IS my job to teach my kids how to find happiness and joy in the mundane and less than lovely circumstances we find ourselves in.

When I see my family being discontent and grumbling about the everyday, I need to take a look at myself and ask myself if I have I been finding joy in my everyday.

I remember back more than ten years ago when I was sitting in a little rural church listening to a visiting pastor from Liberia preaching from the front. He was sharing the trials and struggles that living in a war torn country brings and would say "Still I have joy!". How simple yet profound that phrase is and it has stuck with me. My circumstances are nothing like those he was speaking of. Yet, at times, I find myself grumbling and complaining about the mundane. The mundane where I have enough food to eat, my children are safe and I can worship with other believers on Sunday. Oh, the bittersweet taste of perspective.

Still I have joy. A choice. Mine.