I realize I completely left out my joy the past couple days. Not good.

So real quick:

TUESDAY’s JOY: This day at work was good because I was busy. Things are picking up a smidge and I am learning and almost…*GASP*…liking it. ALMOST. (God, I would still travel the world and write books and make documentaries at any time…just so You know. I’m ready. Anytime.) This is another aspect of my life that has been affected by my joy-revelation this weekend. When people used to ask me how work was, I’d say, eh. It’s a job. It’s ok. We’re just waiting til God moves us somewhere else. Whatever. But now I tell them, well the better my attitude gets, the better my job gets. And it’s true…the more I’m open to learning, the more I’m open to investing in my coworkers (and allowing them to invest in me), and the more I’m willing to think outside the box about what my position and this company can do differently. So sometimes I am stubborn about this particular joy. But I’m only human.

WEDNESDAY’S JOY: I would say that yesterday was even more busy and I learned even more at work. Mom’s out of town visiting my sister (and picking up our new dining room set! Yay!) so Cody and I, along with my brother, went to Dad’s for dinner. It was a really nice night. I went early and hung out with Dad while he cooked and we had a drink. For such a busy week, it was a slow evening. I don’t allow those to happen much at my house because I’m fabulous at keeping myself busy.

In other news, I was reading Oprah’s O Magazine last night and was really saddened by an article I read called “Mid-Wife Crisis.” I skimmed it, but the author was talking about how women shouldn’t be ashamed to consider divorce in their marriages and that it’s acceptable now in society. It was kind of like a youhavethepowertochangethedirectionofyourlife type thing. Granted, I don’t think she was necessarily encouraging it because she also basically said, more power to you if you decide to stay. But she herself was divorced, and she talked about her husband like he was an air-headed baffoon and that while he was a “bad man” he was just a “moderately bad man” like most other husbands. She likened marriage to something that doesn’t just take work, it is work. And she said that any woman who calls her husband her best friend doesn’t have any friends because “your best friends are your best friends.”

When I started telling Cody about what I read, he started shaking his head. The article made me sad for a number of reasons (and I could spend hours talking about it, but I won’t).

1. I know she wasn’t married anymore, but she talked about her ex-husband like he was just in the way at the time they were married. It probably wasn’t always that way, but I am really adament that you don’t tear down your spouse to anyone. If you have a problem with them, talk to them about it.
2. Marriage does take work, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be a burden, something to get through. It’s a refiner’s fire, for sure, but we should be glad for our the trials in a marriage make us better people.
3. Cody is my best friend, and I really think that’s how it should be. He knows everything about me, he’s the first person I go to, and he sees me raw. And his love only seems to get bigger. Only God can give a love like that.

Cody does not complete me because God does. But he walks with me and reminds me of how to live life as myself. Because he loves the me that sometimes I try to cover up. And he sees me as beautiful and he makes me want to be a better me, the one God made me to be.

And that is worth all the hard work in the world.

ON LOVE
~ By Thomas Kempis ~

Love is a mighty power,
a great and complete good.
Love alone lightens every burden, and makes rough places smooth.
It bears every hardship as though it were nothing, and renders
all bitterness sweet and acceptable.

Nothing is sweeter than love,
Nothing stronger,
Nothing higher,
Nothing wider,
Nothing more pleasant,
Nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for love is born of God.

Love flies, runs and leaps for joy.
It is free and unrestrained.
Love knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds.
Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil,
attempts things beyond its strength.

Love sees nothing as impossible,
for it feels able to achieve all things.
It is strange and effective,
while those who lack love faint and fail.

Love is not fickle and sentimental,
nor is it intent on vanities.
Like a living flame and a burning torch,
it surges upward and surely surmounts every obstacle.