2015, Your Year to Choose Joy

My junior year of high school, my English teacher made our class watch a video about the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle.  The next day, we had a quiz about the main points of the video. My friend Sarah and I came up with a little song to help us remember these main points. While I'm not going to sing the song for you, I am going to share the main points of the video with you, because they have stuck with me all these years:

1. Play
2. Make their day
3. Be there
4. Choose your attitude

Basically, my teacher was trying to help each of us understand that we could choose to make her class fun, or we could choose to hate it. But it was our choice. We could play around and have fun, support one another, be present, and choose to be positive. Or we could dredge through class, only focus on ourselves, be distracted by the outside world, and decide to be negative.

What a great life lesson to impart on a sixteen-year-old. That our attitude is, at it's core, our choice.

Some days it is truly impossible to choose joy. It's impossible to feel like you can finish your day in victory. You get a speeding ticket on your way to work, which makes you late, then your boss gets onto you for being late, you spill coffee on your fancy dry clean only pants, you get in a huge fight with your boyfriend, and to top it all off, your internet is out. There are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.

But, that doesn't mean we can't go into this new year deciding to choose joy. As often as possible. And here's the best part: while there are days that choosing joy feels impossible, there are so many more days where it's so easy. Where your life is an overflowing, abundence of blessings and good and pure joy.

We were never meant to live a life of anything less than joy. Jesus came to rescue us, so that could have a full life here and now. We were never made to be overwhelmed, or bogged down, or depressed, or defeated. We were made for joy and for victory. So decide now that 2015 will be your year to choose joy. In the face of everything, when the world says otherwise, choose joy. It will make all the difference.