Happy

Someone I just recently met, read my tag line on my email signature. It's been there so long I've forgotten about it and clearly it's message is lost on me. 

'Be joyful always.'

It's always been one of my favorite scriptures. Mainly cause I tend to favor the short and easy to memorize ones but more importantly because I need the reminder. 

In former stages of life, I was known as 'the smiley one.' People I barely knew would comment about the smile always plastered on my face. It wasn't necessarily that I always felt like smiling but maybe more that I always wanted people to wonder what I was smiling about. ;) But I was smiling anyhow. 

At some point/stage in life, people stopped commenting on the contagious smile and kinda stopped commenting all together. I wasn't the one people gravitated to at a party, rather I felt invisible instead. I couldn't start a new table and wait for it to fill up around me, I had plenty of room to stretch out in the empty seats on either side. Instead of smiling through an awkward conversation or changing the subject of a hurtful one, I've mastered the art of even more awkwardly staring at the ground in silence until someone gets the hint. (I should probably be embarrassed to admit I've done this multiple times lately.)*

Recently my two year old has been obsessed with talking about feelings; mainly he's telling us he's happy all the time. He points out when someone's not (Dakoty sad. Dakoty not happy). The other day he held his fingers to the edges of his smile and told me, 'if you just do this you will be happy!'**

The two year old telling me I needed to get the sourpuss look off my face? 

Ouch. 

'Be joyful always.' 

Not just when I feel like it. Not just when things are going my way. Not just when people are being nice to me. 

Always. 

I really do have a lot to be thankful for but even if I didn't, isn't life and God's love for me more than I deserve anyway? Isn't that something to be joyful about?

Always. 

Lord, help me to be joyful in all stages and seasons of life; not just the easy ones going my way. Guard my tongue when I feel like grumbling and instead fill my life and words with encouragement and love. And some happy. Amen. 



*No, I'm not in junior high. I just act like it. 

**We think his obsession started with the 'Happy' song. Who wouldn't be happy when listening to that? ;)