I Teach Them Joy

When I dance at dinnertime with a sore throat, a stuffy nose, daddy in the middle east, and a messy house behind me.  I teach them joy.

I turn up the music, carry the lasagna over, then I spin and dance.

They smile.  I laugh.  And a wave of freedom and release washes over me.  Sometimes I'm looking for that feeling all day long.  Running to a fussy baby, while folding laundry, checking on a math problem, and the water for dinner is boiling over.  I search and wonder for that release, that feeling of joy.  That feeling that life is fun and fancy free.

It's my choice to make it.  Its His promise to bring it.

I can do bible studies on joy.  I can make them memorize verses on joy.  I can look up multiple meanings of joy.  I can declare Truth that Jesus is joy.

But then when I go about my day and have no joy.  Then I'm all talk and no game.  And that's what they'll remember.  They'll soon forget the bible study I did with them and the verse I showed them.  They'll remember the lab experience and that the experiment failed.

So I turn the music on and dance by faith.  Faith that the God I love is never talk, with no game.  He brings it.  I feel crummy and guilt ridden again over that shelf I didn't get organized and its contents are still all over the floor where we eat.  But I start to dance and in breathes the joy.  Fresh.


I don't have it.  Joy.  But I gotta step out.  And it will come.

And then my boys faith may just have been deepened a bit as the music goes louder and they spin and laugh with me.