Finding Joy

How do you find Joy on the hard days?  What small things rekindle it in your heart?  I feel like this is something many of my friends and myself have been dealing with this winter.  So I thought I would write out small ways I have been doing this, to remind myself now and sometime in the future when I have yet again forgotten.

First I fill my diffuser with happy oils

I research ideas for my preschool class and try them out with the kiddos or I have quiet time with God and ask him to show me the Joy in my life

 Which I then journal about, or list things to be grateful for or even instagram a picture (little things like hummingbirds at my feeder, sunshine through the window, dreams of my summer garden....)

If that doesn't work its time to join the kids in play.

Phone calls with JoJo

New stretching poses and exercise with O

Building planes from trash with Ferd

And everyone's favorite, ridiculous snap chat faces!

 And last but not least, photo shots with these adorable faces!

What are your go to Joy seekers? Exercise, stretching, chatting with friends a good book? 

Musings during advent

 As I try to truly prepare for the coming of God made man, as I try to carry Christ in me just as Mary did

Lately, somewhat inspired by the Pope, somewhat inspired by my past work and upbringing, somewhat inspired by articles and books of faith and saints and stories of despair in the news and maybe greatly inspired by motherhood, I look around and see such excess in our life. I feel neglectful and dismayed at the abundance and lack of true gratefulness. How can I redirect the want of things (in myself, in my children, in my husband) to a spirit of giving, a want of time together. A joy in what is here and now. How can we as a family of little ones (so often overwhelmed in daily life by small things) help others next door, around the corner, across the ocean have want they need and maybe a little of what they want, while accepting a little less of what we want.

I sit up at night and think of the horror of taking the place of other mothers,

Of watching my children grow up or die in war torn places. Never feeling safe in our own home.

Of being unable to provide a house to my children like many homeless in our own country.

Of being looked down upon by those with enough because "I just haven't tried hard enough to get a good enough education or a well thought of job" so therefore my family just doesn't deserve our dreams.

Of being displaced from my country or having recently moved to find opportunity and not speaking the language of my new country that I don't deserve respect and that my children must be criminals.

Why have we become complacent in our good fortune (no matter how small or large)? Why do we complain that what we have doesn't spread far enough?
How do I present Jesus to the world if I cannot share in these struggles with compassion? How do I help my children to see past the surface to Christ underneath?


I saw this picture on a blog while looking for other information.  Mary pregnant and preparing for Jesus.

Food for thought Friday

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, "The Chance for Peace," speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953 (h/t Hume's Ghost):

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.