Happiness? Joy?

Wow...it's been awhile! Things have been spirally up and down and left and right in the Goodwin house lately. I had an epidural block done on my neck/shoulder and Kristina had surgery and before I knew it I had not posted a blog in weeks...nearly a month!

Since this month has been sort of strange in our home I have noticed that I have been feeling alot of different emotions. Some of them are very explainable and others not so much. For example, at the exact same time I have felt anger and anxiety over a medical situation that Kristina is dealing with as well as feeling peace and comfort. How bizarre is that?

I have felt out of breath if that makes any sense to anyone. Not physically but emotionally and the more I try to gasp for air the less air there is to breathe. I'm sure someone out there actually understands exactly what I'm talking about. Okay, at any moment now someone can raise their hand and let me know that I'm not the only pink elephant in the room!

In the midst of my frustration I rode home yesterday afternoon listing out my feelings. I made an imaginary column of what I was feeling and an imaginary column of what I wasn't feeling. With every emotion listed I felt as though a burden was being lifted. It was if someone was writing down the emotions for me and placing them in the correct column. By the time I arrived at church I had released some tension, but had not had some great epiphany or life altering event take place.

As my day has progressed today I have been thinking alot about joy versus happiness. I've been wondering why some days I feel joyous and why others not so much. I've been thinking how you can be happy and sad or cry and laugh at the exact same time. I decided to google it because after all google seems to tell us everything; right? Well, as He always does, God works in wonderful ways (not mysterious but wonderful ways) and googling my question led me straight to a devotional that was written about two years ago. The writer quoted James 1:2 "...when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy." (NLT). What? I thought to myself. Just as I started to click back to find something that was really going to help me (haha) I continued to read. The writer began to explain that so many times in life when we go through trials and storms we seem to justify it by saying that maybe we weren't as close as we needed to be to God and therefore He has allowed this storm or this tragedy in our lives to bring us closer to Him when maybe, just maybe the reality of it is that this storm that we have found ourselves in is just that...a storm. The worry and the anxiety that we feel...well that is an emotion of our surroundings, but yet the peace and the comfort we feel...well that's Him!

God never moves...we do! When our lives are flipped upside down and the wind is swirling around us, He is there. The pressure that we identify as the outside world squeezing us, oh that just Him hugging us!

I have said many, many times to my children that love is not a "feeling" it is an action and I have actually learned today that is the difference between happiness and joy. See, happiness is just a feeling...it is an emotion that we feel, but joy is an action. We can choose to be joyous or not just as we can choose to love, or not. He has given us the options, it's the choice that is ours to make!