Journey of the Word

I awake at 8:30.

8:39.

8:48.

My night-owl self aches and groans, my foggy brain creating possible scenarios for how I might maximize my morning routine and hit that precious sleep button just a few more times.

9:57.

Down the stairs, grab a mid-morning snack, out the door. Time to face yet another day.

A day full . . . of business. With three jobs, a dozen schedules, almost twenty weekly one-on-one’s, and far too many devices and communication mediums grasping for my attention, my brain is constantly on overdrive. I multitask and live on-the-go and keep adding stuff to my plate and plates to my juggling act.

I make a little money, and then spend it on bills and insurance and groceries and gas and people and consider taking a fourth job.

I come home, ready to veg for the evening. After I’ve made dinner, washed a sink full of dishes, sorted through the mail, and caught up on social media. I then squeeze every moment out of my favorite hours of the day and finally make myself go to bed when I can no longer manage to keep my eyes open.

And I wake up the next morning and do it all again and wonder how on earth people survive with kids.

As years of this go by, I often do the very adult-ish thing and wistfully survey this life I live and ask “why.”

Why.

Why this. Why all the busyness. Why all the flurry and hurry and worry. Why all the working, only to have to work again, and again. And again. What are my days producing for me? What is this life, if only full of stuff like this?

And then I remember joy.

Joy.

Joy for yet another day. In every mundane moment of every relentlessly routine day, I have the glorious opportunity to have and to know and to bleed joy.

For this is God’s gift to man.

I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil — this is God’s gift to man.

Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil — this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

Ecclesiastes 3:12-13, 5:19

 [photo credit: unsplash.com]