#joy2021

As we raised our traditional glasses of Asti to celebrate a new year, I like most of you had little awareness of what the twelve months before me held. For some of you faithful readers (it actually has been a long time since I wrote) you will know that Josh and I, prayerfully choose a word for each year on New Year's Eve. I am not into resolutions or claiming for a new me to begin on January 1st. Rather we take a word and allow that to shape our story over the coming twelve months. On January 2021, as we sat with our yearly planner, baked camembert, awaiting fireworks - we wrote 'JOY' over the chapter of 2021. 

We had not taken many steps into 2021, before the wonderful experience of homeschooling, that so many of us found ourselves in, began - that joy was seeming a little less of a frequent visitor in our home. As the year went on, honestly, I felt loss, grief or even bizarre, would have better described the year than joy, or any other word for that matter. There were moments of wonderful new adventure in our 2021(I hope to share them soon), but even in the stepping into the new, one must let go of the old. 2021, called for me to say goodbye, goodbye to friends, goodbye to personal expectations, goodbye to mentors, 'inspirers', goodbye to a family home, goodbye to some we hadn't even said hello to. How in a year so full of 'good-byes', had God thought we would learn joy?

Could it be in the midst of sorrow, change, uncertainty, homeschooling, that joy could be found? I don't claim to have all the answers, nor can I say I look back on 2021 with a feeling of joy! But I have learned in the midst of the journey, in the midst of the storm that there are, if we choose to see them, glimmers of joy. 

There is the joy of companionship, that in my grieving, even in the lonely moments, I was not alone - that stood alongside me in their grieving were women, holding each other up and encouraging each other forward. How true that we were never meant to endure life alone, introvert or extrovert, we need one another.

There is joy in being able to rest on the strength of a God who walks alongside me in the storm. We cannot miss suffering, we cannot choose exemption, or to abstain from feeling its sting - but we are offered the strength of God to be sustained through it. 

There is joy in learning to celebrate the small victories of the day, the whisper of a child saying "I still love you" after a day arguing through homeschool, the quick conversation you popped in to have which turned out to be so special, the text message received with encouragement just when you needed it most, the hug, an answered prayer. There are others, so many others that are easily missed in the middle of the storms if we are not tuned in. 

2021, I'm not sure joy will be my first word to describe our chapter, but I am thankful for the lesson of learning. Learning that joy is not a fleeting emotion or feeling based on the circumstances of my story but rather, joy is a truth based on the unchanging constant assurance that I am not alone. That even in the storms of life, there is One, sustaining and strengthening me to continue to step into the next chapter of the journey. 

Wonderful readers, I'm not sure your thoughts of joy, or how your 2021 chapter was written - but my hope for you, is that you find joy in companionship, joy in the little, and above all, joy in knowing the strength of God sustaining you each step of the journey. 

To those who we lost in 2021, I miss you. I am incredibly blessed to have shared some chapters together, my life has been so wonderfully enriched by being invited into your story. There is joy in the memories, and joy in the peace of His promise.