Embracing Joy

These past few weeks, I have had difficulty embracing joy. I knew I walked into that new place that I’ve been talking about walking into, for so long, and I got there, and I was so excited. Then, it seemed like something snuffed my joy right up from under me.

I felt like I had to fight to get back to that place of joy.

Releasing Independence

There are so many times that I was a fighter in the aspect of always striving, it was never spiritual. My fight was always to prove something, or always to be like, no, I got it, you know – my independence.  I am deeply learning to let go of, and not in the aspect of I don’t need to be independent. More so, I don’t need to have the mind frame of. If it doesn’t get done, I need to do it myself. That was draining me.

Have you ever been in a place where you want someone to help you, but you can’t.  The way that they do It, isn’t up to your standards, and then you do it and then you’re exhausted?

That’s pretty much how my life has been.

It’s always been a Oh, they can’t do it, how I want it. So, I got to do it for myself. And honestly, some things; absolutely, they should be done by you. A lot of times though we need to learn to let go of control and learn how to delegate.

We need to learn to let people help us.

I was in a place before where I wanted to be helped.

I wanted the help and people weren’t available to provide the help that I needed. Honestly, the help that I needed was not even for anyone else to pick up!

The help that I needed was within myself. I needed to figure out what the heck I wanted. I needed to figure out what I needed in that time. In reality, it’s not help we are seeking, but a shoulder to cry on.

We need someone to empathize or sympathize with us in our pain. We need someone to vent to someone to understand, right?

I never required myself to get out of this seat of perfection

For me, I was trying to embrace this joy because of people and my perspective of people and my love for people and really people will be getting on my nerves.

Honestly. I love people I am a lover and a builder of people.

But common sense is not common. Respect is “earned it’s not given” I despise that term by the way. A lot of times it’s been a gimme, gimme gimme type of situation.

I required people to come out of that place so much, but I never required it for myself.

Releasing the seat of striving for perfection was endless.

I was the problem

But at this point in my life, I realized that in these certain places that I was trying to control I was the problem. It was never really anybody else.

By telling my significant other who he needed to be, I was going unsatisfied. I tried to make him fulfill something that he couldn’t fulfill.

The un-fulfillment that I’m missing from my life was made to be his fault. Every fault that I saw on him, I would nitpick.

I had to unlearn to relearn

I had to unlearn, fixing people and helping people get to where they needed to be.

Truly though, I had to hone in on embracing where I was. To learn how to trust. To let go of relying on my intelligence and experiences. A lot of times; we rely on our experiences to be the gage of what we do, what we say and where we go.

Sometimes those experiences are what, where and who created the trauma or the trauma block in the first place.

I had to funnel through everything that I learned. Unlearned it to come back and embrace what my reality, my dreams, the love of the Father, all of it.

I didn’t believe that Jesus could love me. I always saw him doing things for other people. For some reason it would never happen for me. I would be like “you gon’ come through for me?” Are you gonna – like what are you doing? You know? In that, it stifled my belief and my hope and my Joy
in all of these things and I had to work through that.

Finding the joy within

Well, why do you not see yourself valuable? Worthy even of receiving blessings? Why do you feel like he has forgotten you? * I’m rhetorically asking you as well and I want you to get vulnerable with God right here and tell Him
why!*

In that I was able to start relying more on Him to eradicate this unbelief. Even though, I didn’t see it happening for myself doesn’t mean that it wasn’t being worked on.

Many of the things that I wasn’t seeing for myself was because I was choosing not to look at them.  I was focusing on getting to the destination versus seeing the work that has already been done.

Embrace the journey

You always hear about people talking about, “embrace the journey”. Love on the journey. Enjoy the journey.

We don’t, it’s like our lives, are a to do list and you got to check it off. Once it’s done, we go on to the next thing and you don’t celebrate yourself. You don’t look at how far you’ve come.

There might be times where you will look at yourself and see how far you’ve come. But it’s more on a retrospect like Dang, I really made it through that.

It’s never that I’m proud of myself. What looks like an accomplishment to me may not be the same to others.

So, embracing joy has to look like what YOU think embracing joy looks like.

There are people like well, your kids should motivate you. Having nice things should motivate you and these
should be your why!

What!? I’m sorry but that’s too shallow for me! Don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying I don’t value my kids or that they don’t motivate me to be better but for so long I could not understand that correlation.

Responsibility was not motivation for me and I’m not sorry for saying it because I had to grow up too quick and responsibility was something I was not equipped for at the time.

Joy that can be sustained

My children are not the reason why I’m joyful.

They bring joy to my life but they’re not the reason I have joy. I have joy because I’m going to be able to KNOW that I worked through my stuff so that they’re not going to have to get it out the mud.

Their success won’t be predicated on struggle. That’s where the joy is for me. Where those things can be embraced.

When you’re looking at joy coming from the standpoint of tangibility and the aspect of monetary gain; you’re never going to see the perspective of joy, when it’s founded on carnal realities.

So, in me embracing joy for these past few months, it’s the type that can be sustained.

It’s not the momentary joy. You can have joy for a moment and then it will dissipate. The feelings are temporary because there’s something else to do.

When you truly access the true essence of joy; You’ll be able to walk in it.

My life is literally a process.  A journey where you see someone bridging from not knowing who they are, all the way
into the wholeness of what, who, and why they are here.

That type of freedom is what people fear. That type of joy is not easily attained.

In all things acknowledge Him and He will direct your path. Make the crooked pathways straight. In Him,
we Live, move and have our being. Are you living moving and being with him or are you telling him how
you want to live, move and be!?

Until next time, Rest in Him. Find your joy and Express it!

Mommi Vanessa