{Be Real} Counting to Joy

I know it, like the way I pull the camera up to my eye. The way I squint with my right, look with the left. I look through the viewfinder, hungry. Hungry to see beauty. How the soul needs this every day, more than lungs need air.

So many of my mornings start reading the bible, scrolling through my devotional apps, and sipping coffee. That has become easy. It’s easy to do the routine of reading other people’s words. But the harder thing? The mornings I decide to stand in front of our big glass windows that overlook the mountains in my backyard, and the vast blue sky. It’s the harder thing because when I plant my feet in that spot, my soul says, God, I’m looking for you today. My soul needs to see you today.

Why is that so hard to say? I know it’s not just me here…some days it’s so hard to open our eyes to God and lift our hearts before Him. And that’s all He wants from us – our hearts. He wants our soul to gaze at His face, our souls to drown in His grace.

Every day, we are invited to fall in love with Him again, and open ourselves to joy.

I wrote last week about letting go in order to open ourselves to that joy. The opening is hard work, and important work. But equally important is what we do after we let go and open.

After we let go, counting his faithfulness is the way our soul holds on.

It sounds so overly simple, to take out a pen and paper and write. To count all of His gifts. And it is. But it’s always the simple things that change our lives.

Every day we count. We start counting right before our heads lift off the pillow. We count the things we have on our to do list. We count the amount of hours we have to get ready for the day. We count the dollars in our bank account, we count the emails that stack up in our inbox, the text messages we need to respond to, the likes on our Instagram picture. Why not count grace?

A few years ago, when I read “1000 Gifts” by Ann Voskamp, my soul exhaled and let out a yes. Ann challenged me to see that counting God’s gifts, through the door of gratitude, is the only way I’d truly have more joy in my life.

Ann writes that we all suffer from a soul amnesia – and I can’t think of a better way to put it. We daily forget who God is. It feels horrific to write this: We forget the goodness of the God who has never failed us. But we do. My heart is sad to confess, dear sister, that I forget His goodness all the time.

To save ourselves from the free fall of forgetting God, we need to practice remembering.

I’ve been through so many seasons where I’ve felt stuck. I’ve had my share of job worries and community problems and relational shifts and times that just feel dark. There were seasons that had so many questions, swirling around my mind and tangling like a ball of yarn. I didn’t know my way out. I couldn’t find joy’s oxygen.

So I took out my pen.

Sunshine streaming through window.
A warm cup of coffee.
Encouraging text messages.
Trees budding with new life.
Driving with the windows down.
Camera in hand.
Worship music through speakers.
Rainbow in the sky.

I just started writing. Writing all the things that God had given me that day, or that weekend. Writing anything that would redeem the way it feels, sometimes, to just go through a mundane day and wonder if God is still with me.

And the more I wrote, the more my hand pressed into the paper, the more God pressed into me. A smile cracked on my lips. And suddenly, my lips broke and a gentle laugh came out. A laugh from a deeper place than I knew existed. We all have that place deep within, that can let out a brave laugh into all of our darkness. The place of joy. It’s where God lives.

Joy surprises us, any time we remember God is still with us. Any time our eyes can see that He is still giving us good gifts. Our eyes, our perspective, is really everything. Even Jesus said,

“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.”

-Matthew 6:22 MSG

We know this, it’s all a matter of perspective. And holding joy is no different. We need to adjust our perspective, keep our eyes open, in order to hold joy. Ann Voskamp writes,

“How we behold determines if we hold joy.”

Our daily work is to adjust our eyes to see his grace. And just keep counting.

When we count the ways that God loves us, when we truly see every little thing as His gift, His undeserved grace, we will never stop seeing Him. And we will never stop holding joy.

 

“For out of His fullness (abundance) we have all received [and had a share and we were all supplied with] one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift [heaped] upon gift.”

-1 John 1:16