Tag: joy

Good Mood of the Soul

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”Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” – Joseph Campbell

This post was originally published on 8/10/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this.

Recently, a friend sent me a printout of a sermon that my dad, who was a Presbyterian pastor, gave on parenting 36 years ago. She had a printed copy and kept it filed away. Now that her kids are long grown, she sent it to me.

In it, my dad gives a quick synopsis of his children’s personalities, “We look at our three children and see that their responses to life were distinctly different from day one. Our first child was laid back and relaxed … our second was wound up so tight she couldn’t keep her head still to nurse … our third was happy and charming. They had those marks when they were born … they still have them today.”

I’m the third one. That was written when I was 17 years old. But there’s something about family patterns that keep us trapped in roles from which we need to move on from. For me that was moving from happy to joyful.

In her recent book, Atlas of the Heart, researcher and author Brené Brown defines happiness as “Looking at the data we’ve collected, I would define the state of happiness as feeling pleasure often related to the immediate environment or current circumstances.”

And that fits pretty well with the list I can name of the things that make me happy:

  • Dance parties with my kids
  • Finishing a shower without interruption from my kids
  • Hearing a song I loved from college in the grocery store
  • A vanilla milkshake on a hot summer day

When I discovered meditation and mindfulness during my travels through the less pleasant periods of my life, it taught me that joy is a different feeling altogether. Brené Brown says she thinks of joy as “‘the good mood of the soul.’” She defines it based on her research as, “An intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure and appreciation.”

For me joy comes when I let go of seeking and preference. As poet Mark Nepo said, “One key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.” It’s cultivating my awareness of what is already present and my delight at the magic in the air. It works when I stop narrowing my field of vision to my agenda and open to all there is. Not surprisingly, researchers have connected joy to gratitude and describe the two together as “an ‘intriguing upward spiral.’ (from Atlas of the Heart). Gratitude increases our ability to feel joy, joy makes it easier to find gratitude and so on.

And here are the things that make me joyful:

  • Every time I get to wake up and witness a sunrise
  • Catching a glimpse of my kids in a circle with the other kids in the neighborhood leaning heads in to examine some fascinating part of life
  • Holding hands
  • Hearing the clink of glasses at a dinner with dear friends
  • Witnessing a whale surface to breathe
  • Listening to the Bach Cello Suites played by Yo-Yo Ma
  • The view from the top of a mountain no matter how breathless, exhausted and cold I am
  • Anything that comes out of a conversation that starts with “How can I be of help?”

The conditions of happiness are specific and fleeting. I’m frequently happy but it certainly isn’t a constant.

The conditions of joy are deep and enduring. They represent ties in my life, beauty of this world and things I’ve worked to make priorities. It is the current underneath my mood. It’s the reward for when I’m aligned with my values.

For the times of my life where I’ve felt like I’m stuck, wading through glue or too busy taking care of others to take care of myself – it’s joy that pulled me through, making it worthwhile all the way. I might have been born happy, but I’m grateful to live joyfully.

(featured photo from Pexels)

An Adventure

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“Jobs fill your pocket, adventures fill your soul.” – Jaime Lyn Beatty

Last weekend I took my kids to IKEA. I had to borrow my brother’s truck to do it. When the kids and I joined up with our family and friends later that day, and were sitting out on the stern of my brother’s boat to watch the Blue Angels, my sister-in-law commented that she couldn’t believe I took my kids with me. She said she gets stressed just going on her own. My friend, Eric, chimed in with a good-natured smirk, “She thinks of it as an adventure.”

Bahaha (I’ve gotten that laugh in writing from the delightful blogger and Cheryl Oreglia). But hey, he might have a point. I had the itinerary completely mapped, and packed a snack for each break. There were even ropes involved. It might not be a mountain climb, but it had some of the same elements.

I don’t know you all, but there isn’t anything like a project from IKEA to make me feel completely stupid. I say that even though I really love putting things together. But that first page, the one where you have to start assembling, and are looking at a wordless page indicating three or four parts from the dozens strewn around, and six or more screws, bolts, barrels, and dowels from the hundreds? Well, ugh!

Invariably, I do something wrong. Usually right out of the gate. This time it was to put those short wooden dowels in the wrong holes. And because I often get am racing to “completion,” I like to do it systemically, and did it for all the boards on the page. Then to make sure I was extra diligent, I hammered them in. Only to find out on wordless page number two that was wrong.

There was no way I found to get the dowels out, not pulling, or using pliers, or trying to make them cold in case the wood would contract. I had to drill them out. As I sat on the floor of Miss O’s bedroom with sweat running down my face and her loft bed still in pieces around me, I had to face that I was already on the wrong path, and had to go back to step one.

Huh, not entirely unlike a mountain climb after all.

Eric’s remark, even though delivered smirk, might have been right on the mark. It’s reminded me that of the adventures I’ve been on, they have all come with hard moments – and also learning and growth. The other thing they’ve all had, whether I’ve made it to the top or not, laughter, the satisfaction that comes with trying, and joy.

Last weekend I took my kids to IKEA. We got a loft bed with a side of adventure. Not a bad deal….

If you have a moment, please check out my Heart of the Matter blog post today about happiness versus joy: Good Mood of the Soul.

Try, Try, and Try Again

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“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” – Mary Anne Radmacher

I’m sure I’m not the first parent to say that my kids are making me insane. I don’t mean that in a pull-my-hair out kind of way though. I mean it according to the phrase, “insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”

Because it feels to me that letting my kids do the same thing over and over again, often comes with the different result.

Last week, Mr. D wanted to ride his bike home from pre-school. We couldn’t do it on Monday or Tuesday. But when Wednesday rolled around, I dropped him at school with his bike, that he proudly rolled in to park next to his teacher’s bike, so that we could ride home.

I had Miss O and her friend with me that afternoon so the three of us rode to Mr. D’s school to pick him up. It took us about 10 minutes to get there. Mr. D sagely choose to walk his bike down the hill to the bike path to begin the mile-and-a-half home. Which is a long way on a bike with training wheels, but he, as our leader, bravely started out.

And then 50 yards later stopped and said he couldn’t do it. Uh-oh. We were a long way from home. So I suggested we take a snack break. After a nice snack break in the shade, we were back on the bikes. Mr. D again set off as the leader and this time went about 100 yards before stopping and declaring he couldn’t do it. That time we stopped to look at ants.

In that fashion, we slowly made our way home with a great deal of tension between the two girls who were antsy to race ahead and Mr. D taking breaks. It took us almost an hour-and-a-half.

The next day, Thursday, when we got in the car to take Mr. D to school, he said, “I want to ride my bike home from school.”

Oh boy. I might have rolled my eyes when no one was looking. But here’s the thing – I know he can do it. He’s done it before, just not at the end of the day. So I loaded his bike in the car and dropped him at school. This time when I picked him up, Miss O wasn’t with me and I attached a third wheel seat to the back of my bike so that if he chose not to ride his own, he could sit back there.

For that attempt, he made it about halfway round the lake before he decided to try out the third wheel. I chained his bike to a tree and we rode home that way, even though he’d never wanted to try that “trail-a-bike” before. Then I had to pack up both kids into the car, drive back around the lake to pick up his bike chained to the tree. The result – another hour-and-a-half expedition to pick up Mr. D from school a mile and a half away.

So then Friday rolled around. When we got in the car to take Mr. D to school, he said, “I want to ride my bike home from school.”

This is where the insanity comes in — I said “Okay” and loaded the bike into the car. On the way home, he made it half way round, I chained the bike to the tree and he rode the rest of the way on the third wheel. But it was easier this time and I popped by the tree to pick up his bike when I went to get Thai food after my friend Eric arrived for dinner.

And each time? Well, there were moments of tension but we also had a good time, and had fun trying. My kids constantly remind me that life is insane – in the best way. That the boundaries of what I previously thought I could do are just mental barriers to blow through. That there is joy in trying the same thing over and over again – and getting a different result.

I’ve written a companion piece about kids and joy: Bundle of Whose Joy? on the Heart of the Matter blog. Please pop over there if you have a minute.

Looking in Through the Sliding Glass Door

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“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” – Nelson Mandela

The other night, I was standing at the kitchen sink putting the final dishes for the day in the dishwasher when my kids walked into the kitchen after bedtime. I caught sight of them – seven-year-old Miss O in the lead hugging her stuffy close and three-year-old Mr. D seeking a little comfort by standing in the shadow of his sister and wearing his little dinosaur shorty pajamas. I had to turn back to the sink for a moment to try to put my game face on. It was a clear violation of bedtime rules and I needed to try to assemble some sort of serious countenance because seeing them quietly standing there had totally melted my heart.

It was like I caught a vision of the reverse of Brené Brown’s sliding glass door moments. She describes those as the small glimpses where you see the life you could have on the other side and have to decide whether or not to cross the threshold.

In this case, it was like I was on the outside looking back in at the life that I created for myself when I made the choice to have kids. I had a fleeting flash of what walking through that sliding glass door into this life has delivered.

I saw my life has been redefined to drop most standards of cleanliness and order, and all attempts at perfection. Instead it has become a continuous re-sorting of my priorities so that I’m trying to do what is important in the moment. And in the shuffling, I’ve come to discover that I can repeatedly choose my kids, myself, and family instead of arbitrary external markers of success.

The glimpse let me see that I’ve gotten better at “being” instead of “doing.” My kids are a lot of work and in a strange paradox they have taught my how to let work go – to relax and slow down. I get so much less done – but I laugh so much more while I do it. And when I don’t laugh, when I’m all bound up and tight – these two are my sanity check to reground myself in why.

I glimpsed how the power of believing this all is my choice has carried me through some really tough times of sickness, sleeplessness, and carrying too much weight. Simply knowing that I chose this has given me strength I didn’t know I had before.

I saw my transformation to believe in miracles – because I’m living with two. And my kids continue to be miracles long after they were born because they’ve become my teachers. I thought I would be the teacher and they would be the learners – only to find out that I’m the one learning about how to have a meaningful and authentic life. Those lessons come from the myriad of interactions that we have had to crouch and look at bugs, stuff our pockets full of rocks, snuggle together to talk about feelings, quietly draw and color together, run excitedly to the beach on vacation, fold into each other while reading books, lash out in anger at boundaries, fear, and discomfort, and heal together holding hands when we’ve talk/acted/laughed it out.

By becoming their lightening rod for big emotions, I have learn to cultivate my own emotional intelligence about the weather inside me. They’ve taught me to choose joy. Not happiness, but joy!

In that moment, I caught a sense of how everything that transpired before I had kids has come together to help – my love of outdoors, my family, my gaining a sense of going with the flow, the endurance training. And most of all, my faith, and that has the goodness of my dad all wrapped up in it too.

I saw that “me” had been completely replaced with “we.” That I have given up the ability to make unilateral decisions and in return have been gifted with a life filled with heart.

From all of this, I was left with a heart melting feeling. Seeing my kids both as the precious, earnest, and delightful little ones that they are and the courageous, free, and integrated people they are becoming. And seeing myself as the same.

After being gifted with this glimpse of things, I finally turned to my kids to hear them out as to why they were out of bed. They’d been fighting and needed a referee. My little flash of perspective helped me choose not to be irritated or impatient but instead just listen. I told them I loved them and sent them back to bed.

My post on Wise & Shine today is about my mom’s choices: The Choices We Make: My Mom the Spy

The Road to Gratitude is Paved With Things Going Wrong

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“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.” – Maya Angelou

A couple of weeks ago Mr. D was silent on the way home from school on a Thursday. It was a special, I’m 3-years-old and I have no words for it but I’m about to be sick kind of quiet. And sure enough, within a couple of hours, he had a temperature of 101 and was coughing.

As I kept him home from school on Friday, I was so grateful that he’d have the weekend to heal. Then charting out the typical course of illness for my little family, I was grateful that Miss O would probably make it until her mid-winter break before she caught the cold. And then I was grateful that it wasn’t Covid.

In other words, I was filled with all sorts of gratitude in the midst of something going wrong. As I was juggling my work schedule to take care of a sick child, I felt the full force of what I had to be thankful for.

“Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who described themselves as joyful, actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice.”

Brené Brown in the Gifts of Imperfection

Brené’s quote ties together gratitude and joy. But for me, I think there’s another relationship at play – that is with optimism. When I’m feeling hopeful and optimistic, I don’t spend much time on gratitude because I assume everything is going to work out. It’s only when they aren’t going swimmingly that I reconnect with gratitude and begin the upward spiral.

I’ve described myself as a congenital optimist. But I have a daily rhythm where I slide from hope to hopelessness. By the end of the day, I’m exhausted, my inner critic is in full force, and I find myself feeling more often than not, that my efforts in any or every area or all for naught.

Listening to my inner voice at 8pm the other night when my kids went to bed, I noticed this different tone. I was critical at myself for not putting away their cups of special sparkling apple juice when my kids went to brush their teeth so that when my son drank a sip of it after he brushed his teeth, all I could imagine were little sugar cavity bugs eating his enamel all night. And, in my head, I was angry at my kids for leaving a squishy toy on the floor that I veered away from only to hit my knee on the cabinet.

It’s easy to blame my bad nightly attitude and tiredness on my kids. But before I had kids, it was the same time of day that I’d start drinking wine so perhaps I just naturally accumulate dust during the day that makes me less sparkly.

But it’s during those hours when I’m less sparkly that I’m most grateful. That helps me to sleep and re-attach to my optimism.  It’s a cycle from optimism to darkness, then to gratitude which fills me with joy. I’ve noticed it is a full-circle that feeds itself as it progresses. It keeps me in touch with what’s important – which is most obvious when I’m in the down part of the loop.

In part I noticed this cycle because of a podcast I did with Libby Saylor (aka The Goddess Attainable) about her post Really Listen to the Way We Talk To Ourselves. In this delightful and illuminating conversation, we talk about self-compassion, dating and the mirror of love, and healing wounds from our families of origin. It was Libby that got me really listening to myself and focused on a lovely goal – to listen to myself (in any part of the cycle) with love.

I’d love for you to listen to our podcast.  Join us by following this link: Episode 6: Really Listen to the Way We Talk To Ourselves to listen on Anchor. You can also find it on Apple, Amazon, Spotify and Pocket Casts by searching for Sharing the Heart of the Matter.  Please subscribe!

The Coming Radiance

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I’m not sure how many of you also followed Martha Hendricks of the White Hair Grace blog so forgive me for introducing someone you might already know. But for anyone who wasn’t, Martha was an 80-year-old blogger with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and sharing the stories of getting old gracefully. She had a lot of roles in her life. In her words, she was “professional classical singer; a Norwegian rosemaler; a pastor. And now a writer. “

I say “was” because she passed away this past August. But not before penning an incredible post that is as much about living as it is dying. So I’m reblogging this beautiful writing from an lovely woman:

whitehairgrace's avatarwhite hair grace

Dear friends, I am Martha’s eldest son posting these final words that mom felt she needed to share. She wrote this post August 12th, but didn’t publish it. My mom passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family this past Sunday, August 21st. She so loved writing this blog and sharing her life with all of you. Thank you all for the joy you gave her. She is with her beloved Dwight once again.

“Learning to be still, to be really still, and let life happen – that stillness becomes radiance.”

Morgan Freeman

My dear readers and followers – Hello again! Surprise!

When I wrote my last blog in May and closed out my White Hair Grace page, I thought that my work of seeking out the miracles of grace had reached a kind of natural conclusion. Of course, the best of intentions meet up with life’s larger plans, and here…

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Carried by Joy

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“Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there.” – Rumi

The other day I needed a photo of myself. I used the search feature of my phone to find pictures and although I wasn’t entirely shocked, I was a little surprised that it only came up with 3 of me by myself in 7 years. Virtually all of my pictures are with one or both of my children. And a few were with my beloved dog, Biscuit.

What I like to eat, where I want to go on vacation, what I do with my days – all these things have been hijacked in my life as a parent. I wouldn’t name this time as the marker of high personal happiness in my life – but wow, is it filled with joy. And it has been joy that has carried me through times when I’m sleep- deprived, achingly tired and spent. Which is why I wrote about happiness and joy in my Pointless Overthinking post this week: Good Mood of the Soul.

Photos of the Week: June 4

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In a week that ranged from rain to sunshine, sickness and health, nights that had restless sleep and nights we slept well, not only did I eat Dove chocolate to get through, but I also wholeheartedly adopted this wrapper advice.

My favorite picture of the week – little people casting long shadows. It reminds me of the beginning of Peter Pan where Wendy is sewing his shadow on so it can always be with him.

Backyard camping where the primary wildlife we saw was the cat trying to squeeze herself between the tent body and the rain fly.

I know what the boots are for – measuring who has collected the most water at the end of puddle jumping. But what are the umbrellas for?

Reading my tea leaves — I see love…!

How was your week?

The Right Thing To Do

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“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell

After I dropped my daughter and her friend at school yesterday, I kept driving towards my toddler’s daycare while an inner debate raged over whether I should take him to school. He had a cough that he’s 85% recovered from and never had a fever. I tested him and it wasn’t Covid. He was mostly fine but cranky enough that he’d likely not have an easy day. I could drop him off and still be within the guidelines of the school.

But I kept hearing my dad in my head saying, “If it’s the right thing to do, often it’s the hard thing to do.”

Not taking my son to daycare would definitely be the hard thing to do. It was a Monday morning and I had a day packed with work and things to get done. After spending a weekend primarily focused on my children, I was more than ready to switch gears to productivity.

Pondering why the right thing to do is often the hard thing to do, I think it’s because it requires a sacrifice. We give up our plans in order to help someone else. We give up our pride in order to say we are sorry. Or we are giving up the expected path in order to find a deeper answer.

But on the other hand, we gain a freedom of spaciousness within ourselves. It’s a little like telling the truth all the time and then you don’t have to remember all the lies you told. It’s also like forgiveness – where you free up that energy that you no longer have to hang on to. It’s got a payoff in inner unity and less worry.

When I turned the car for home instead of his daycare, I felt the reward immediately because I was listening to my inner voice. In this case it was the voice of my dad but it was also the voice of the wisdom within.

Listening to that voice is never easy because it always makes me wonder if I’m crazy to give up my plans to follow it. But I’ve found when I do, it always puts me into the Heart of life where I can be surprised by the joy. In this case, the joy of an uncomplicated day with my son.

What about you – is the right thing to do is often the hard thing to do?

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Joy of Repetition

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“Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.” – Suzanne Weyn

Recently I was talking to my 2-year-old about potty training. His reply was “I already went to a toilet.” And it’s true – he has gone in the toilet once.  About a month ago he got lucky when he wanted to try to potty before getting in the bath.

I tried to explain that there are many things we have to do repeatedly in life. So often I want to declare something to be “DONE!” only to have to repeat the task so I understand my son’s irritation about having to go potty again and again and again!

Talking with my mom about this, she flipped the question and asked, “How many things do we only do once in our lives?” Which I thought was a great way to illustrate that most things in life are done repeatedly. Even our mistakes take work not to repeat.

In addition to school and work, there’s also sleeping, eating, exercising, bathing, trimming our nails and hair, doing the laundry, cleaning. The other day I thought I’d swept the entire house of dirty laundry and gotten it all done – only to discover 2 hours later a small pile of dirty clothes stashed away by my 6-year-old.

But since the ultimate “DONE” is death, I try to celebrate that doing things repeatedly is a gift. A gift of the ongoing nature of life, a poetic reminder that life is a cycle, an opportunity to find a new song in the repetition.

And in my favorite example, breathing, my life has been measurably improved once I started noticing that every breath brings renewal and fresh air. Even in this task that is regulated by the autonomic nervous system and takes no real talent to do, can be improved when done with intention.

So, yes, my darling son. We have to do things over and over again. And if we are paying attention, we can even find some extra joy in these precious cycles of life.

(featured photo from Pexels)