Joyful Guardrails

joyful guardrails

What’s your greatest joy? My children and being their mom brings me more joy than anything else in life. But joy is not the only feeling that comes with parenting. There’s also worry, frustration, fear, even anger blended with the love and joy we experience as parents. We need to be joyful guardrails. Choosing joy …

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Why We Need to Surrender

why we need to surrender

I love how God plants similar thoughts with different people. Last week, I noticed a friend’s post about letting go and receiving what we truly need.  I immediately agreed to her sentiment of surrender = freedom. Wait, what?  It’s the opposite of what we think and want. We want to hold on, clutch what is …

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Letting Go of Perfect

letting go of perfect

We’re not perfectionists. Maybe not, but sometimes, it feels like it. It’s one thing to expect perfection (or as close as possible) from oneself. But when these same standards are now being applied to our children, they feel harsh, dare I say, perfectionistic. I mentioned this to my husband who disagreed as noted above. But something …

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Choose Joy!

choose joy

Choices. We make literally hundreds to thousands of choices daily, many of which impact our future. We may not even be aware of their effect in the moment. But choices are powerful. One of mine-to choose joy, has had a lasting impact not only in my life but many others.

Choose joy.

A cloak of grief and sadness covered my life. I lost both Mom and Grandma within weeks of each other and it sent me reeling. After a year or so of navigating the heartache, I longed to be free of sadness. My life was ahead of me with a young family who I needed and needed me. I decided to choose joy.

At the time, I didn’t recognize it as joy as much as choosing to let go of negative. I was tired of grief and regret and craved happier. I chose to purposefully seek positive.

When younger, my glass skewed half-empty with negative go-to reactions and worry as the norm. But in my twenties, I had shifted to being more positive. It was a willful choice and soon I was seeing the world as half full.

Then in a blink, the two most influential women in my life were gone.

It was a deep, bruising blow and revived my negative nature.

To read the rest of my post and what I happened when I chose joy, click to see it on my friend Alisa Nicaud’s Flourishing Today blog!

 

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Joyful over Happy

joyful over happy

Is happy the same as joyful? Earlier last year I desired to find out. My premise and belief is that no, they are separate things. This was confirmed later last year and almost everyday since as I chose joyful over happy. Sudden surprises, unnecessary messes and hurtful actions flew through the air. In the midst, …

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