30 Days of Joy: Day 30-Enjoy

It is hard to believe that I am writing my last post of 30 Days of Joy.  It has truly been a labor of love.  I took a few minutes to go back to the May 31 post where I explained what I hoped to accomplish by writing for 30 days.  I talked about creating Circles of Joy-sharing joy so that others can experience joy in their lives.  My 30 days have addressed a variety of ways that I have experienced joy in my life.  I also encouraged everyone to reach out to others to share words, pictures, and stories of joy.  I hoped to do this daily.  While I didn't accomplish this every day, I was able to do so most days and will continue this practice into the future.

Many of my posts talked about "enjoying" various times and activities in our lives.  It struck me how closely related to "joy" this word is.  In fact, it has the word joy embedded in it.  I had never thought about this before.  When I looked up its meaning in the dictionary, I found:



en·joy

v. en·joyed, en·joy·ing, en·joys

v.tr.

1. To receive pleasure or satisfaction from.

2. To have the use or benefit of: enjoys good health.

v.intr.

To have a pleasurable or satisfactory time.

It sounds like such a lukewarm feeling when I read the definition.  Joy should always be exciting and exhilarating!  It makes me wonder:  what happened to joy when it became a verb?  Shouldn't it be the act of feeling joy?  Keeping that meaning in mind:

• I have enjoyed writing these posts and sharing my life with you.  
• I have enjoyed thinking and learning about things I had never explored before.  
• It was fun to reminisce about young love. 
• It was a joyous occasion to meet my new grandson.  
• Writing about my family was joyful.  
• I enjoyed all of it and hope that you did too.

One thing that I have learned:  there is joy in our lives every single day if we look for it.  Some of the days I was writing while in pain from my injury, but I was able to find joy anyway.  It certainly made the pain easier to bear.  I would encourage you to always look for the joy in your life-not just on those happy days when it is easy to find, but also on those days when it is more of a struggle.  I believe that we need joy on those days more than ever.

When you "enjoy" something, think about the joy involved in the experience.  Once you have found your joy, find a way to share it!  It is not meant to keep close but to broadcast to others so that they can share in your joy.  It's not bragging-it's spreading the joy and being positive in your attitude toward life.   Our world is so free to share the negative, troublesome events; why not share the joyful ones?  We will all be better for it!

Thanks for joining me in this journey!  I hope that you will join the site so that you can keep reading as I move to weekly posts and that you will always feel free to contact me through this blog or Facebook.  Have a lovely Fourth of July week!  And don't forget...

Have you found your joy today?