Today, I Choose Joy!

Mistakes to avoid: remorse over yesterday's failures, anxiety over today's problems, worry over tomorrow's uncertainty, waste of the moment's opportunity, procrastination with one's present duty, resentment of another's success, criticism of a neighbor's imperfection, impatience with youth's immaturity, skepticism of our nation's future, and unbelief in God's providence. --William Ward

I tend to worry a lot but my worry is nothing compared to the way that my wife worries about things. For years she would get so worked up about every little thing that it even affected her health. I am a bad one to be married to if you are a worrier. I am an artist, musician, and writer, and have had several jobs over the years and there hasn’t been a real sense of security in my occupation or income. My average salary was enough to qualify for free lunch at school, and on top of all that, I was a student for a quarter of our married life. There were times when I felt that we were living the dream, but many more years where it felt like we were falling apart and it was hard to get out of bed in the morning. A very wise pastor told me once that, “being grateful is almost indistinguishable from joy.” I think that being thankful for what you have will bring joy. This same wise pastor told me that “joy and happiness are not the same thing.” You can have joy in the midst of any circumstance, but we see happiness as a goal in our culture. The “pursuit of happiness” is all a part of that formula that we create in our minds of how things need to be in order to experience happiness. We can actually choose Joy! Joy is not a thing that requires a prerequisite. You don’t have to be rich, strong, pretty, or famous to experience it, yet it eludes so many of us. We look around us and convince ourselves that we don’t have the “good life” because what we have doesn’t match someone else’s. The old “keeping up with the Jones’” idea is a tired expression that is an exhausting pursuit if that becomes your focus and your goal. As mentioned earlier and is worth repeating—depression is worrying about the past and anxiety is worrying about the future. The key is not to worry—why are we so prone to worry about everything?