JOY!

I know quite a few friends and some family members, who are struggling with different problems in their lives right now. I wonder what I can do to help?  Maybe a card, letter, phone call, hug, or maybe even a word of encouragement? In this one email that I received, it gave quotes about JOY. I thought they were well worth repeating and maybe even writing down, so that I could remember them on a really tough day.

I would like to share them with you because, I know all of us will have some time in our lives... where life will seem just too hard, almost impossible to handle but we can and we will. The trick is to find the JOY that needs to be in our lives. It is vital to know how to get it.

One Christmas many  years ago I was asked to teach a class about the Joy of Christmas, I was of course excited because I love to teach, speak and anything to do with Christmas!  I began studying about the subject and realized that to have JOY, we should incorporate in our lives, these 3 elements.

J...is for Jesus Christ, if we truly understood what He did for us and we truly patterned our lives after His, we would have true Joy and know that we could handle anything with His help!

O...is for Others. It is vital to serve others to find the lasting JOY that we are talking about. Not just a few happy moments but true JOY!  Service is vital in finding that JOY!

Y...is for yourself. If you don't love and respect yourself, it is very hard to truly love another. It is vital to get our lives in BALANCE, by taking the time we need to love and nurture ourselves.

I hope these quotes remind you to find true JOY in your life every day. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it!  Thanks for all the Joy you all have brought into my life and the lives of my family!

"Don't postpone joy until you have learned all of your lessons. Joy is your lesson." ~ Alan Cohen

"Joy is the feeling of grinning inside." ~ Melba Colgrove

"Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls."  ~ Mother Teresa

"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy."   ~ Joseph Campbell

"One joy shatters a hundred grief's.”  ~ Chinese Proverb

"The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy."

~ Eudora Welty

"Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness." ~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

"Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day." ~ Henri Nouwen

To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.  ~ John Templeton

"Joy is not in things, it is in us." ~ Richard Wagner

"Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give." Eleanor Roosevelt

"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." ~ Psalms