williams/Williams
IS IT JOY?
I’m not sure where the ‘depth of soul’ comes from.
You know the kind, the motivational alert where you reach, seemingly way down into your gut, which results in you doing things you didn’t think you were able to do-or even wanted to do. Maybe that is where the term ‘gut check’ comes from.
I don’t know.
I can listen….
Music sometimes does that for me. Instrumental music like that penned by David Tolk, or Parijat, or Helen Jane Long. I can listen to them and travel in my mind and never leave the chair.
My soul is reshaped, and revitalized, and I can move on with purpose moments before I did not possess. Only this time, with a soul which has seemed to breath fresh and clean air—causing a new heart to seem to grow. A pre-dawn sunrise will do that as well or the snoring of a peaceful dog. A giggling baby, causing the sins and troubles we all have to wash away in the sound which is so joyful, you being to giggle too.
It is joy.
I think I can….
I don’t mean ‘happiness.’ That is different-at least to me. Maybe not. I think I can be joyful and not really be happy. I mean the feeling of knowing the end of the story, and it’s a good ending, and its ‘my’ ending. Like I can read the last chapter and say ‘oh, well then, I’m good.’ I seem to have been both, and it’s hard to explain. Joy, to me, lasts longer. It seems to show up when you least expect and it is deep. The best part I have discovered as I have gotten older is it shows up and sometimes-you actually get to see the hand of God moving it. Maybe that is the best part. I think it comes with age and years of asking for things, maybe even joy, and not seeing it when it actually shows up. Now, here in this season, I can. I know it and I see it and its perfect.
Why?
What changed? Why can I see it now and not when I asked for it? Because, I think, I was looking at it through my eyes and my wants. Sometimes, God and I are in sync, most of the time we’re not. During my life, I wanted what I wanted. Not what Dad wanted. And whose idea of need might be better between Dad and me? Yeah, I get it. So, it has taken years-decades. Now, I ask and He knows my soul. He’s in my soul.
He’s in your soul.
God is there.
Somehow, God is there. In the room, in the truck, in my life at that moment—saying nothing. It’s almost as if He made those things for Him and wanted me to enjoy them as well, sharing them with me, just for this moment.
It seems the last few days have been that—joyful. Don’t worry, things will return to shitstorms, but experiencing that, like the calvary coming over the hill at just the right time and realizing it was nothing more than asking for that contentment, and the item asked for actually appears, well, that leaves a smile on my face.
Not to the point of giggling, but its close enough.
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