Finding JOY in the Balance

Lately, life has been up and down with illness, children's needs, housework, and finding the joy in the balance. I saw this on a friends blog and thought she wrote many of my same feelings. My father often told me that "he didn't often feel like smiling but would put one on and soon find that he felt like smiling". Isn't much of this life just showing up for the work? Better to learn to do it with a joyful heart." The following post is from: In The Heart of My Home

The day can begin under less than ideal circumstances: a sleepless night, a wicked headache, hormonal craziness, a blood sugar low, a festering argument. Whatever the root, the result is a bad mood. And then comes the defining moment of the day: do I succumb to the bad mood or do I fight for the joy that lies just under the weight of the crosses? Do I grumble and exaggerate, even celebrate, the trials of the morning, assuring that everyone around me knows I'm suffering? Or do I force myself to focus on the eternally present joy of my Christian inheritance and put a smile on my face and persevere in cheerfulness for the sake of the people entrusted to my care? And really, for my sake too.

One thing is certain. I cannot be cheerful under my own strength. I pray for the grace. I stumble. I falter. I persevere imperfectly. But His grace is sufficient. Always sufficient.

God doesn't call us to wallow in our suffering. He doesn't want us hoist our crosses upon the shoulders of the people around us. The sleepless night is my cross. It's not my husband's cross. If I stomp around the kitchen, whining about how tired I am, I foist that cross onto someone else's shoulders. If I "fake" it, and smile instead and force myself to take even more care with breakfast, I bless someone. The thing about choosing joy, even when we don't feel joy? Usually, we end up feeling it too. It's not dishonest. It's discipline.

When we dwell on our suffering, we magnify it. When we accept it and choose to be ever-aware of the joy that comes with being God's own child and to share that joy, despite our own immediate unhappiness, we sanctify it. This month, St. Teresa of Avila reminds us that children need to see us doing virtuous deeds. There is real virtue in cheerfulness. It's infectious virtue. Children can learn cheerful obedience from their mothers.

You know the saying, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy?" That one proves true in most every household. But when Mama smiles, despite her suffering, she blesses. And she is blessed.

There is sadness in our world. There is sorrow -- real sorrow and genuine pain -- in every life. We're called to embrace our crosses. We are not called to hit other people over the head with them.