NOT 31 Days of Joy

Something I’ve learned over the last few years and even in this month of trying to focus on joy is the importance of intentionality in choosing joy.

I’m also learning that there can be intentionality in choosing to stop things that aren’t bringing joy to my life.

I’m discovering this 31 Day Blog Challenge actually fits in that category.

I was so excited when the month started to center in on this topic and blog about my journey. While the focus of joy has continued strong and so has my desire to blog, the pressure of writing specifically about that topic and doing it every day has not proved to be joyful.

So, I’m abandoning ship. It happened unintentionally a few days ago when I simply forgot but it caused me to pause. So today I consciously decided to not force myself to keep going in this daily rhythm.

I am keeping the goal of writing more and I also have my ears and heart tuned in for concepts of joy. (For example, it’s been crazy to see that there hasn’t been a day since the start of October where the word joy or rejoice didn’t show up in my daily Bible reading. It’s literally been there every single day.)

So yes. Joy and blogging remain goals but I’m choosing to actually LIVE in joy by putting aside an arbitrary expectation that wasn’t helping me live the very thing I was writing about.

This leads to my questions for you today…

1. What are the things that brought you joy this week?

2. What’s something you may need to stop because it is not adding value, meaning, or joy to your life?