Choose The Joy...

Life is constantly changing. People tell you that when you are young until you don’t listen any more, because you don’t see it while its happening. But then, out of nowhere, you are 60 and wondering what happened. I am there. I feel 35, but my grandchildren are older than my children were when I was that age. That old saying, the spirit is willing but the body is weak? Welcome to my world. I am now the one who can’t make it to midnight on any night, so forget about New Year's Eve. And I’m okay with that.

The biggest change, though, is when you are suddenly caring for your mom, the person who cared for you for all the years you needed her. The reversal of roles, caring for your caretaker, is a tricky one. If you are lucky (I am) your caretaker accepts the change graciously and willingly. And the whole thing is fun, if not necessarily easy on either side.

The whole last year has been challenging for a variety of reasons.  Real life, lived in real time, is complicated in these fractious times.  Health concerns, economic worries, families fractured and living far apart all contribute to the every day stress. There are so many ways things fall apart unexpectedly and you have to shift your life to accomodate without time to catch your breath. Living is much more complicated than it was 50 years ago.

I do not make New Year's resolutions. I think it is an artificial deadline to make promises to yourself you are never going to keep.  That is one more thing I do not need to worry about, so I don't. But I do have goals, set at various times throughout the year, which I hope to achieve. And this year, I set a goal at the beginning of the year which I've been pursuing in a haphazard way for the last couple of years, but I'm going to be more intentional about it now.

Choose The Joy.

Notice I do not say choose joy. The word "the" is important and intentional. I am not just looking for random joy as an exercise in seeking happiness, like seeing a bird singing or glimpsing a pretty flower on a sunny day. Those small joys are good and necessary, but I am seeking something more fundamental and important. In each hard situation or event in which I find myself this year, I am going, with intent, to choose to bring forward with me whatever joy I find and leave the hurtful or harmful or useless baggage behind me.

Choose THE joy. It is a mental and emotional release of what drags me down or holds me back, and an intentional embrace of what is good or right or helpful.

This is not an easy task.  I have been building up to this for awhile. I find for most people, not just me, it is harder to seek out the positive in a difficult or painful situation than it is to dwell on what went wrong. Especially if it is down to our own poor choices or mistakes we have made. But I have learned, over 60 years and lots of changes and losses and mistakes and difficult situations, that there is always some small joy, some positive thing, to be found in everything, even the darkest hours. Focusing on the wound has never, ever helped move me forward, hard as I've tried while clinging to the pain.  But finding the joy, bringing forward the positive, usually is instrumental in bringing me peace.

What does this look like for me in real terms? A year ago, my husband was diagnosed with a very serious rare and aggressive form of prostate cancer. It was scary, and his stage three, grade four cancer turned out to be even more serious than we expected.  But looking back on it now, a year later, I find the joy in a renewed and more grounded relationship with my husband. I am choosing to leave the fear, especially of the cancer returning, behind, and focus on the joy, taking forward a stronger and deeper relationship into our future.

My mother, who has always been my rock and my anchor in life, was suddenly very ill in December, and is now, at age 97, living with me. It has turned my life and hers upside down, and turned the daughter into the caregiver and the mother into the care receiver. But there is so much joy to be found in having this opportunity to spend time with my mother in this unexpected way. I can ask questions, of course, but even more, I get the time to put together another puzzle, play Yahtzee, help her make her bread, and give back to her a small portion of the love and caring she has given to me for a lifetime. It is joy unlike any other I have experienced before. Although all the changes are not necessarily easy, I will take forward the joy I have found in being able to give back a little bit of the unconditional love I have been given my whole life.

My first step on this new path is not expecting perfection from myself.  I will still dwell in dark places on occasion, and I will certainly forget to seek out the joy at times. But the next step will then be to remember my goal, and to get myself back on the path as soon as I can.

I am claiming Romans 12:12 as my go to verse for this year:

Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer.

In other words, Choose The Joy. My mantra for 2024 and beyond. Happy New Year!