Joy is My Word of the Year for 2018

My Word of Year for 2018 is JOY--yes, again. While it is good to study as much about the Bible as possible, it is becoming more and more clear to me that my focus was, is, and always will be JOY. As I read back over that sentence, it sounds as if I'm complaining; I'm not! I love studying JOY as much as possible. I love noticing every possible way that JOY is used. Just yesterday, as we were driving home from church, I noticed this display in the window of one of our local florists:

It's almost as if they created that display just for me! LOL!

Some time in early 2008, I found this gorgeous purple planner for 2009 that had beautiful embellishments with a focus on JOY. That was the first year that JOY was my Word of the Year; I knew that well before 2008 came to an end. I remember talking with a young lady (a student) about how God plans things out and prepares us in ways we'll never know or understand and may not even understand afterward. 

It was in 2009 that the Lord first gave me Psalm 45:7: 

"You love justice and hate evil.

    Therefore God, your God, has anointed you,
    pouring out the oil of joy on you more than on anyone else." 

As I've shared previously, I knew immediately that He was speaking directly to me as I read those words: "You, Polly, love justice and hate evil. Therefore God, your God, Polly, has anointed you, Polly, pouring out the oil of joy on you, Polly, more than on anyone else." I wrote the verse in my journal and I remember weeping as I prayed and received the Lord's anointing--right here in my living room.

Little did I know that in November of 2009 I would be at death's door--literally. It took all the JOY I had in me and then some to make it through those days when my family and I thought I was going to die. Walking around with an ostomy bag is NOTHING to be JOYFUL about, let me tell you, whether you are in your late thirties as I was or older in life. Using the bathroom into a bag on your stomach while teaching makes finding JOY in the day-to-day livings was a struggle too difficult to put into words.

Add to that battle the fact that I have continued to struggle over the years with the losses of my babies. That burden has always weighed heavily on my heart and soul and made finding JOY more difficult than normal. But I clung to God's promise of His anointing oil of JOY--more than anyone else. If my God had promised it, He would fulfill it.

I may always struggle with finding and receiving the full JOY that God has for me--that He has anointed me with. But that's ok because as I struggle with finding JOY, I am seeking JOY--I am learning about JOY--I am receiving the fullness of JOY.

So I will continue to have JOY as my Word of the Year for 2018. It may be my Word of the Year forever and ever, amen and amen. Wouldn't that be wonderful?!

What I really wish others knew about me is...

What I really wish others knew about me is...that I may walk around day in and day out with a huge smile on my face, telling those who ask that I am "Peachy," but the truth is that I am more often than not wearing a mask. Yes, my Lord has anointed me with His oil of JOY more than anyone else, but inside, my soul continues to scream in pain because 3 of my children are not here on this earth with me. Their absence is ALWAYS on my mind and in my heart and soul. 

James Isaac-3/17/99
Panya Ruth-11/10/99
Anna Rose-11/22/05 

Both Joy-Full and Sad

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”   ― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Those who know me at all, know that one my recent favorite books is The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. I fell in love with this book while on a school trip a few years ago as my students had the movie version playing on the bus. I tried to avoid watching it since I hadn't read the book yet, but that proved impossible. The story sucked me in and I was reading the book on my Nook by the time the movie ended and I finished reading the book in about two days.

The above quote comes very early in the book and it is one of the themes of the book that stands out the most to me because I feel exactly that way. In recent years, I have been both Joy-full and sad. Yes, at the same time. I find myself laughing from deep within my soul while sobbing my heart out. Or vice versa. 

It has been a very confusing and difficult time.

No matter how hard I try, no matter how many passages I read in the Bible (including the Psalms), no matter how much I worship, no matter how soul-deep my laughter, no matter how big my smile, I am still sad. Sadness has become an ever-present companion. 

But even in my sadness, I find myself enjoying reading my Bible, I love worshipping my Lord and Savior, I laugh from the very depths of my being, and I smile with every part of my being. Being Joy-full has become second nature for me. I believe that God has anointed me with His oil of Joy more than He has anyone else (Psalm 45:7 & Hebrews 1:9, NLT).

When I first saw the movie Inside Out, I wept with Joy because it seems to reveal that what I feel is completely normal. In order to know True Joy, we must also know True Sadness. One cannot BE without the other. It is in our deepest sadness that we are able to experience true, uninhibited Joy. Those who have experienced the deepest of sorrows KNOW what True Sadness is, so when we are able to find and experience True Joy in life, we KNOW what that means.

I am not doing a very good job of explaining what I am trying to say, I know. Let me try saying this another way.

The past few weeks have been filled with an incredible amount of Great Joy. I had a positive employee evaluation. Seven beloved ladies and I went to the Women of Joy Conference in Pigeon Forge, TN. Not only did the eight of us have a wonderful time together, but we had a wonderful time at each of the sessions. And best of all, I got to meet Chonda Pierce AND Margaret Feinberg!!! And have my picture taken with BOTH!!! And each autographed her book for me!!!! Talk about the HEIGHT OF JOY!!!!!

Then the weekend after that, my uncle got married, we had a family reunion (maternal), and my son turned 15! We have a WONDERFUL time. We laughed! We talked, shouted, really. (We're a loud group, it's true.) We sang. We ate. And we laughed a whole lot more. My husband and son even seemed to enjoy themselves--as much as is possible with a whole bunch of people they'd never even met, that is! It was truly a weekend full of Joy-full family time.

Then it was the end of the semester and graduation, which was a lot of fun--even though I wasn't allowed to woo-hoo. I did hug as many students as I was able as they finished getting their pictures taken! And I finished my grades and other paperwork on time!!

And Mother's Day was so sweet. My boys bought me a wonderful gift--exactly what I wanted, needed, and asked for.

But then, the other day, as I was sitting at my desk working on nothing in particular, but yet something important, I felt this wave of sadness descend on me. Imagine an ocean descending from above, slowly, and engulfing you completely. You can breathe, but at the same time, you're struggling for air. There is no up. There is no down. There is only the sadness completely surrounding you, washing over you and keeping you under water.

And no matter how much you laugh, no matter how much you smile, no matter how much you read your Bible or worship, you remain in the depths of this ocean of sadness, unable to find, let alone break, the surface.

But my God is a big God. He is bigger than this sadness that has engulfed me. I will NOT let it keep me down. I will continue to read my Bible. I will continue to worship and praise my Lord. I will keep laughing. I will keep smiling. I will keep loving.

I will allow the Lord to anoint me with His oil of Joy.....I will NOT be defeated by the Sadness.

Works Cited

Shen, Jean. "Series 1: Healing of Wounds of the Bride and Growing Intimacy with the Lord." Invitation to His Garden. Prophetic Art. Web. 6 Sept. 2014. <http://www.jbrushwork.com/html/paintings.html>.

My Journey to Joy

Yuck.  When I was much younger--with my whole life ahead of me, all I saw were sunshine and roses.  My life was everything anyone could dream of having.  I had (still do) wonderful, amazing God-fearing parents who taught me more than I ever express.  I had (still do) and older brother with a bright future ahead of him--he was married, already had a gorgeous little girl, and was working towards becoming a chemist.  I had (still do) a younger sister who was everything I'd ever wanted in a sister and who brought light into everyone's life.  My grandparents were very much a part of my life and I loved and appreciated them very much.  In the summers, we spent more time with them than we did our parents and we loved it that way!  I was in college to become a teacher.  I had wanted to be a teacher even before I had started school--way back when I was three years old, I would play "School" in the family bathroom--for hours!  I had many friends.  I had a boyfriend who eventually became my fiance.  

Life was soooo good!  I had so much to look forward to.  My future was bright and I was excited about what God was going to do.

I was so young and so very naive.  I had NO idea that life was NOT all sunshine and roses and that just when I'd think I could at least have some sunshine with a few roses, something would happen to bring tremendous storms and to kill my roses even down to the roots.  (Read my previous blog posts for the trials I've suffered.)

If you had shown the image above to me way back then, I would have laughed and said, "Bring it on!"  I believed that I honestly, truly, and seriously handle any turn in the road life brought.  I was excited and READY for my Life Journey.  

Since then, of course, I have learned.  Oh, have I ever learned.  

One thing that continues to stay with me, though, as I am coming out of my cave is that for every single step of my journey, God in Jesus Christ Himself has been with me.  Sometimes He has walked beside me.  Sometimes He has carried me.  Sometimes we have simply sat together while He has held and comforted me.  Always, though.  A.L.W.A.Y.S. He has been with me.

What is even more amazing to realize is that while I am bruised, battered, and broken and feeling

beyond repair, all I'm supposed to do--all He expects me to do--is to be able to STAND.  He is fighting for me.  He is my Protector.  He is my Shield.  So many scriptures demonstrate the truth of the fact that God fights my battles for me.  All He asks me to do is to STAND--and be courageous!  (For right now, I'm not going to take the time to list all the scriptures with such a reference, but trust me.  If you don't, then please go ahead and look them up!  I hope you'll be wonderfully amazed and excited to see how very many times God has said that He fights for us!)  My whole job is to wear my armor--keep it on--and to STAND AND SEE WHAT HE IS DOING/HAS DONE for me!!!  

As I look back over my life's journey so far, I see so many places where He fought for me.  He did the best He could considering the battle He was fighting.  I have no idea what it is that I am still meant to do in this life, but I know that I am still here on this earth for a reason....that God still has SOMETHING for me to do to glorify Him.  Otherwise I would be dead now from the attacks of the enemy.  And let me tell you, the enemy has attacked.  He continues to try to attack me, but just as He has always done, Christ runs interference.  

Yes, some of the enemy's servants broke through and got to me while Christ was busy fighting elsewhere.  But He has never failed me in spite of those attacks.  I'm still here, right?!  I believe that just as I have wept and mourned my losses, He has wept and mourned with me--all while comforting me--and still fighting the attacks of the enemy.  

I am humbled as I realize what Christ has done for me.  Yes, He came to this earth as a baby to live and die (a horrible, horrific, horrendous death) because He loves me so very much.  And that means the world to me.  It is what originally drew me to Him and gave me the desire to accept Him into my life.  But what has kept me following Him with every fiber of my being is the knowledge that He loves me so very much that He has fought and He continues to fight the enemy--doing everything in His power to keep me Safe.  

His word says that He will NEVER leave me.....I am so incredibly thankful that so far, He never has.  I know that because He has been with me so far on this journey of mine that He will ALWAYS be with me.

For some reason or another, He loves me so much that He has chosen to anoint me with His oil of JOY more than on anyone else (Psalm 45:7 & Hebrews 1:9).  So in spite of the twists, turns, side roads, getting lost, and so on as we have taken this journey of mine, God still wants me to find Joy in Him.  Because of what He as done for me, I find it impossible not to be full of the Joy of the Lord!  

My journey isn't even close to being finished.  I still have healing to do.  I know that God has more for me, especially for my ministry.  He has put dreams and desires in my heart.  I know He will bring them to pass.  I am simply trying to hang on and do my best to EnJOY the ride!

I Choose Joy

Even from the first when my depression started to get the better of me, I have hated the way it made me feel.  Yet at the same time, there was some measure of comfort in my depression.  Because I carried it with me for so long before seeking help, it became my new normal.  For a long time, I was

not sure I wanted to quit being depressed because I had forgotten how to live a life in the fullness of God’s joy and peace. 

I also wanted, for the longest time, for SOMEONE to come along, pick me up, dust me off, and fix me—tell me what I needed to do to quit being so depressed.  Even when I first started seeing my counselor, as I would leave my weekly sessions with her, I wondered how and why she had not admitted me to the local mental facility rather than let me walk out the door.  I did ask her during a recent session why she had not admitted me; she said that she had seriously thought about it, but the bottom line was that I had not asked for it and she did not like to admit people who did not ask for it.

Those were powerful words because if I had known that, I would have asked her to admit me.  I was lost in more ways than one and not only did I not know how to get un-lost, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. 

More than anything, her words made me realize that while I was getting help through counseling as well as other sources (seeing a doctor on a regular basis, getting prescription medications to help with the severe depression, seeing a chiropractor, and so on), I could not depend on these doctors, etc. to make me feel better….to make me better.  They could only help give me the tools that I needed to be able to make a choice of whether or not I wanted to get better.

It all boiled down to the simple fact that I, Polly Anna, had to make a choice that I wanted to get better, that I no longer wanted to allow depression, anger—rage, actually, low self-esteem, and a lack of confidence to rule my life. 

So, okay.  I made the choice that I no longer wanted to live that way, but then came the “Now what?!”  I had no idea where to go from there.

I admit that I found it strange—I still do—that me, a woman who has been saved, a Christian, for most of her life (since I was about three or four years old) had no idea where to begin finding my way out of the deep, dark, cold cave I had been in for so long.  I only knew that I needed to get up and start moving.

Thankfully, with the help of my medical team (most of whom are Christians) and the Holy Spirit, I gradually began to see a change in my whole being.  There is no one thing that I can put my finger on that has led me at least to the entrance of my cave.  I will always be near my cave.  It is my home now.  At least I no longer have to live in the deepest, darkest, scariest recesses of my cave.  I can live in the opening of the cave; I can even leave it for longer and longer periods.  Because of the tragedies I have suffered in my life, my cave will always be my home.

My counselor and I talked about what started me on my path to healing.  I said that it was a combination of many things that have happened over the past two or three years.  While she agreed, she also said that she believes, more than anything, that my healing truly began when I started studying Joy in depth.

One of the first things I did when I realized that only I could change the horror of my life was to begin reading my Bible in earnest and doing one Bible study after another.  I have always read my Bible on a consistent basis and I have memorized a lot of Bible verses, so that wasn’t something I had to learn to do.  I had, though, gotten slack in my Bible reading and Bible studies simply because I was too depressed to care to bother with it.  I knew I needed to get back to reading my Bible on a daily basis, so I chose a Bible reading plan and got started reading my Bible every single day.  Then I found a Bible Study on Joy—I liked the pretty pink cover and it was by the Women of Faith, so I knew it was a good study—and began serious Bible study on a daily basis—again. 

I did not make it all the way through my yearly Bible reading plan that first year, but I did make it through eight months.  Rather than beat myself up over it, as the new year started, I chose another plan and started again. 

As soon as I finished my first Bible study on Joy, I found another one on Joy and went through that one, too.  At first, it was not conscious on my part that I was doing a focused study on Joy, but after about three or four of them, I realized that I was doing a word study.  Then I began to take it deeper.

I searched for every use of the word Joy in all of my favorite Bible translations.  I marked each verse in my different Bibles.  I found that I associate the word Joy with the color pink, so not only did I mark my Bibles in pink ink or pink highlighters, but I even bought a couple of pink Bibles in the translations I wanted to work with. 

I studied the definition of Joy.  I took it a step further and marked the variations for the word joy in all my Bible translations as well as studied the definitions for each:  rejoice, enjoy, glad, happy, happiness, etc.

Eventually, I began noticing songs and poetry that focus on Joy.  I now have files of the lyrics to songs about joy as well as copies of poems.  That naturally led to pictures about Joy as well. 

And then one day when I was sitting quiet before the Lord, He showed me—again, Psalm 45:7 and Hebrews 1:9—“You love justice and hate evil.  Therefore God, your God, has anointed you, pouring out the oil of joy on you more than on anyone else.”  I said, “I know, God.  You showed that to me a while ago.  I really love those verses.”

And the Holy Spirit said, “No.  Read them again.  Slowly.  With your heart.”

“Ok, Lord.”

The words began to sink in to the deepest recesses of my soul.  God wanted to pour out His oil of joy on ME more than on anyone else [I know]. 

Wow.  “But I’m so unworthy, Lord.  I’m still so depressed.  I’m still so angry and even full of rage.”

“Let me handle it.  Just trust me and let me fill you with my joy.”

I wish I could say that the infilling of God’s anointing oil of Joy filled me immediately and that my depression, rage, and anger faded away as the sunset, but the truth is that I am still working on it.  I still have days when they rear their ugly heads and try to take me back down.  At least now I know that the enemy is trying to keep me from receiving God’s full anointing oil of joy and I am better prepared to deal with the challenges. 

I have a long way to go, but I know that God will not give up on me, so I can’t give up on myself, either.

I share all of this with you to say that no matter where you are in your journey, it is important to get quiet before the Lord and let Him reveal a verse, a song, a poem, whatever it is He wants to give you that He has for you.  The scriptures (the anointing oil of joy) God gave me more than likely will not be what He has for you.  Maybe He will give you the same verses, but I very seriously doubt it.  In my studies on joy, while others have found Joy to be a focal point of their lives and studies, I have yet to read about someone else who received these exact verses from the Lord as I have.

God works in His own way with each individual as is best for each individual.  What I need from Him is not necessarily what you need from Him.  He gives each of us exactly what we need when we need it, but we have to be willing to listen as well as be obedient to what He wants of us.  God is not going to conform you to what He has for me or anyone else; He wants you to be you and your ministry to be your ministry.  In order to find that ministry, you have to find the source of your ministry.

Think of it as your mission statement.  Your life verse.  The thesis (point) of your own life.  Your purpose.  God uses our own personal experiences, quite often our tragedies, to help create our individual ministries.  I am working on mine and I share all of this because it is my heart’s desire to see you find yours.

After being depressed for more years than I can count, I can tell you in all honesty that the natural high I get from allowing God to anoint me with His oil of joy is greater than any drug, any shopping, any food, or anything else I have attempted to find joy in.  It all boils down to the simple fact that I am finally working on being in His will and following the leading of the Holy Spirit rather than believing the lies Satan has fed me.

I CHOOSE to be a woman anointed with God’s oil of joy—more than anyone else!  I receive His anointing oil of Joy!