Finding joy

Joy.
I feel like I've been neglecting the very first word of this blog. Joy.
I do not lack joy right now. I am making great friends. I am living a life full of potential and passion and purpose. I really lack nothing.
And yet I allow little things to steal my joy every day. I allow a bad picture to cause me to run away from Facebook. I look at my body in the mirror and think only of the stretchmarks and weight. I am defined by the number on the scale. If my makeup isn't perfect, I spend a while trying to make it so.
But you know what? I'm good.
For the Lord looked at the earth and saw that it was GOOD.
And Jesus came that we may have life and live it more abundantly.
Allowing someone to steal my joy honors no one, especially not God.

It isn't easy to be joyful. I have more than my fair share of reasons to let a cloud hang over my head. And in some hours, these things defeat my joy.

But I won't let them continue to. I fight my way out. I claw and kick at the black cloud and hold ice cubes in my hands until the world returns to its normal, vibrant self.

I have a pinterest board dedicated to happy sayings and joyful phrases.Here's something that I find interesting: all of the quotes on happiness have something to do with finding, getting, gaining. Joy just is. It's a choice we make. It is a state of being. It is how we were created to be.

Here are some things that make me truly joyful. Yes, they are from all over the world. This isn't a case of wanderlust, this is a case of finding beauty wherever I go. And most of these things are universal.

1. Sunsets on the West coast beaches

 2. Crazy mountain adventures

Awesome cathedral towers

 Reminders of what Christ did for me

 Looking at mountains in the cold

 Getting soaked by a water fall (c'mon, look at that face)

 Have I mentioned mountains?

Being my beautiful self, exactly when and where God created me to be

Like a swing

It's a simple rule of physics. Before you propel forwards you have to back up. You have to build momentum. You have to get the motion going before you reach the peak and jump off like a child who attempts to jump further than the other children.

Over the last couple days I have swung backwards. No, it's not a bad thing. I received a wonderful painting bought for me by my Aunt Karen. As soon as I glimpsed it I was taken back to my old world--a world where disorder rules, but never chaos. A world where pain mingles with hopeless, helpless, desperate love to form the sunsets that took my breath away daily for eight years. To the hum of real life, of real love.
To further things, I am blessed to be able to present to a class the conflict in Northern Uganda. This conflict which I followed and then worked with and studied and taught about is once again in my life. For one last time I am able to teach about it.
Let me not forget to say that I am blessed with a professor who has lived and taught in Kampala. This is making my life a lot easier, as she seems to understand where I come from.
I put together a presentation tonight on The Pearl of Africa--the little known nickname for Uganda. As I put pictures in, I felt myself engulfed by the beauty, by the pain, by the love.
I have glimpses of what will come next, but I am hesitant to announce it so publicly. In the meantime let me enjoy building momentum with some favorite flashbacks and stories to my better half--Uganda.