January Sunshine

Deep in the midst of the everlasting January (any Midwesterner can relate, amiright?!), I was commiserating on the phone with a friend a few days ago.  She was walking me through some of her own challenges with her health, with parenting her teenagers and so on.  I was unloading Elena’s latest set of issues on her, desperate for life to give pause, to give breath, to relent in just the slightest, when my friend giggled in understanding.  She replied, “Emmalee, I think we’re just supposed to spend our time looking for the joy.” 

This has reset me back to zero.  It has helped me shrug off the burden of incredulity I’ve been carrying about the current challenges we are facing.  It’s life, Emmalee.  It’s not fair and it sure as hell ain’t easy.  So find the joy.  Find the gratitude.  However small.  However brief.  If you look, you’ll find it.  It doesn’t change my circumstances.  It doesn’t solve my problems, but it definitely changes my mindset, my perspective, my posture.

Standing in sub-zero wind chills as Elena was getting off the bus last week, her darling bus driver, shared with me that Elena had an expression on her face earlier that morning as she was getting on the bus and it just completely made her day.  A mere expression on my beautiful girl’s face.  How often I take for granted the beauty and the wonder and the goodness she brings into the world and into those she encounters!  A simple expression, a simple comment, and it changed my day.   

These reminders in the last two weeks have snapped me back to reality.  Joy and hope and goodness don’t necessarily make up the entirety of every day, but if you choose to spend your time looking, then you so shall find.