Our Joy Journey - Spreading Joy One Day at a Time
/Happy November everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful October, and I hope the Fall weather is bringing warmth and joy to your heart!
If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you know that I did a 31-day challenge to celebrate my birthday last month! The challenge was to find something to celebrate each day of the month, and to fully embrace it and be thankful for it. I am usually not quick to do any sort of 31-day challenge or to overpost about my birthday, but this year was different.
You see, last year I cried on my birthday. Like the whole day. I feel so sorry for Trice now because he had to listen to me cry and whine all day, but he was so gracious! (That man is GOLD you guys!!) Unfortunately this was not just a one time thing. This was a frequent thing. I would ride the roller coaster of being happy and then slam into a pit of depression, over and over again. A couple of months ago, I was exhausted and lying on my couch totally depressed, when I totally had a holy moment with the Lord. With my eyes closed, I could visualize Him holding out His hand and whispering into my ear, “Sarah, here is my hand. Take it and GET UP. I will lead the way. I will help you when it’s tough. Just grab hold of my hand.” That day I chose not to ignore God’s beckoning but rather to grab hold of His hand, and He delivered me from that place of darkness. Depression was a stronghold in my life for decades, but God in His goodness set me free.
How can I not celebrate this amazing fact? How can I not shout from the rooftops about God’s goodness? How can I not share His love with everyone I meet? The Lord is good, and He has brought me out of my miry pit of despair and has called me to go on a joy journey with Him. We call it a joy journey because choosing joy is not just an overnight decision, it is a learned practice and a daily habit that must be formed with the help of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Thus last month, for part of my joy journey, I decided to make up for years of being depressed on my birthday, and I committed to celebrating a different part of life each day. And although it felt uncomfortable at first to call attention to my birthday every day, I ended up being so blessed by this challenge! And really, I pray that through those daily celebrations, at least ONE person was encouraged.
This month, I am locking arms with my sister Katherine. Katherine has her own joy journey that she has been on for the last several years, and it has been really beautiful to see how our journeys have collided over the past few months! We both believe that God is bringing healing and joy to us at the same time for a reason, and we want to share our story with anyone we can. Maybe I'll talk her into writing a little post of her own on here to explain a little more of our joy journey to you ;)
Anyhow, Katherine had the brilliant idea to do 30 days of Random Acts of Kindness… But we are choosing to call them Random Acts of Joy. You see, when you are delivered from depression and learn to celebrate life, the next thing you want to do is to get everyone else celebrating life too! So what if over the next 30 days we did one nice “Act of Joy” for someone new each day? What if we walked together this month on our joy journeys to help spread joy to others around us one day at a time? What if God decides to use US to turn someone's day, or life, around?!
We are excited about this challenge, and we are thankful that God is guiding us on our joy journeys. If you want to follow along on our joy journey, we will be posting to Instagram each day of the month of November. You can follow me at @sarah_head and Katherine at @lovebugddd. I will also try to do a weekly summary here on the blog with the actions we did for the week!
If you decide you want to join in on our daily Acts of Joy, we want to know! Email or message me, and if you are on social media, use the hashtag #ourjoyjourney. We would LOVE to see what ideas you have as well!!
Our hope is that maybe, just maybe, one other person will be encouraged and delivered from depression and choose to walk hand in hand with God on their own joy journey. Life is a celebration, so let's all celebrate it and choose joy together!