Choose New Joy

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. Philippians 4:6-9 TM

This week I watched a classic movie I have not seen since I was a little girl, Old Yeller.
I watched it with both my girls who have never seen them before. Of course Emily bit her nails and clutched her pillow as Old Yeller was shot, and then said “It ends happy right, I mean it is a Disney movie it has to have a happy ending?”. It was a tragic thing for me to have to let my daughter watch. But I suppose it is a right of passage for a kid. I have probably only watched it once in my life, because I hated the ending so bad. Except this time I realized Old Yeller’s death was not the ending at all.

Let me remind you for a moment, if you don’t know, what happened. Daddy comes home and his son is at the top of the hill burying old yeller. He goes up to his son and expresses his sorrow for the boys loss and then says to him.

Now and then for no good reason a man can figure out, life will just haul off and knock him flat. Then Slam him again on the ground, until it feels like his insides is busted. But it’s not all like that, a lot of it is mighty fine. And you can’t afford to waste the good stuff frettin about the bad. That makes it all bad. …. Yeah sure, I know sayin’ it is one thing, and feelin’ it is another, but I’ll tell you a trick that sometimes helps. You start looking for good to take the place of the bad… and you can usually find it. ~Pa from “Old Yeller”

When they come down the hill there is young yeller, the pup of old yeller, and though he has rejected him many times because he was not old yeller, he now has a new perspective. He embraces the young puppy and finds joy again.

It is o.k. to find the happy things even when all the bad seems to be raining down on you. Through losses and griefs, and hurts, and tears, there is joy, It does come in the morning. Sometimes our greatest griefs and losses can catapult us into our next greatest adventures.

What is the happiest time of the year can also be the most depressing at times, realizing the old things that have not come to this new year. But you have a choice. Do you allow the bad to overshadow the new goodness around you, or do you embrace that new joy and let life pick you back up off the ground?