Five Minute Friday: Joy -

From Lisa-Jo Baker, the Gypsy Mama: "On Fridays around these parts we like to write. Not for comments or traffic or anyone else's agenda. But for fun, for practice, for joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker. We love to just write without worrying if it's just right or not. For five minutes flat."

Today's prompt: JOY:

~ Go ~

Of course it's easy to write about the great moments of joy. The first time I held my friend's baby boy in my arms, the answered sight of many prayers and tears. His name was Avery. He lived a beautiful 16 months here and lives forever in Heaven. 

And there are multiple babies that I love and adore that grow and delight me in ways I can't even fathom or explain,
and babies that have grown to be 12. Twelve!! I love them all so incredibly. 

There are the moments of sheer "all is right with the world" when the light falls just perfectly across the lawn, through the Spanish moss dripping from the live oaks, or the waves coming in on the shore and falling asleep in the sun, or watching your parents hold hands and laugh together, or seeing old friends again, or knowing friends are getting married soon, or the promise of new lives to adore and love on.

Those are the knowing moments. Those are the moments that all has fallen in pleasant places in our lives. 

Photo taken - July 2013

And goodness, if I'm not feeling over-instrospective tonight. But I just finished a fiction book about cancer, and it's impossible to not be introspective now. Because of everyone to write about joy, surely I'd know something. And I've a million and one reasons and people to write about who pour joy into my life on a daily basis and how much I love them for it, and how much joy I know through them. 

But it's always the unpromised moments that you never believe will come that change you the most. 

I remember clearly the moment, but not the day, not the month, not the year. Of course there had been laughter before.
Laughter and silliness and general excitement over things. They fall into the lesser categories. 

But ask me on any given day, truthfully, how I feel about loss, and I'll tell you straight out,
if I can, (on a good day without bursting into tears) that I still feel NUMB. 

It was somewhere past 2012. Maybe in September. Maybe in August. Maybe in December? It was sudden and swift and fast and it shocked me like nothing else. After the realization, I immediately burst into tears and cried for long moments, because something I'd so desperately thought I'd never feel again, I suddenly felt that I not only could feel, but I could also KNOW again. 

A moment of JOY. 

~ Stop ~ 

I always want to be known as someone who fights for joy.

 Joy, after all, reminds me that He loves me. 

Joy, after all, reminds me I'm His forever. 

Joy, after all, reminds me that He has won; He has won me and He has won over all. 

Joy, after all, reminds me death is not the end, it is the beginning of life forever with Jesus.

He is, after all, the Source of True Joy. 

With love always,

~ Jean Marie ~