Look to God and Live… Joyfully!

Musings on dealing with life with faith and joy

Finding and Spreading Joy

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  • Lessons from Flanders Field

    In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lie,In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with…

  • Who Am I? Seeing As God Sees

    A couple weeks ago I passed a mother holding her toddler in the hallway at church. The cute little boy smiled and began wildly waving his arms. I smiled. Then the mother started to speak as only proud mothers do and explained that her son was imitating me leading the music. Apparently he recognized me,…

  • Doing the Impossible

    Before I get started, I have to state that I made it! Every summer since Ben’s death I have had some sort of medical crisis. I’ve had surgeries, my head injury, stitches, ER visits, undiagnosable ginormous bug bites, illness, and more. This has been every single summer since 2016. I am happy to report that…

  • More Than Just Exist

    This week I heard one of the most profound observations that gave me a veritable feast of food for thought. At Russell M. Nelson’s 100th birthday celebration the Reverend Amos C. Brown said, “He has justified his existence in this world; he did not just exist.” I love that! But, what does a person do…

  • The Tail of Two Doggies

    This week was a bit stressful, so I decided to just share the tail of two doggies. Two doggies on a walk, that is. I know, I know: this picture isn’t of a walk, but seriously I am risking life and limb as it is and trying to take a pictures would probably kill me.…

  • Helping Heal the Quiet Desperation

    Photo by Inzmam Khan: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-black-shirt-and-gray-denim-pants-sitting-on-gray-padded-bench-1134204/ Last week I had a disquieting thought. It was late at night and I was feeling quite dizzy and even a bit faint. My blood oxygen level was really quite low, and I was a tad bit concerned. It dawned on me (not for the first time, but each time…

  • Turning Away from Anger and Hate

    Sometimes I worry that the hearts of mankind are waxing icicle cold. Not waxing kinda cold, but a frozen-in-shape-about-to-fall-and-hurt-someone type of cold. It scares me. Maybe that’s not exactly accurate – it doesn’t actually scare me, but it saddens me. That’s probably a better way of putting it. It seems as though we are eager…

  • Walk, Don’t Jump, to the Nearest Conclusion

    I don’t know about you, but I absolutely despise it when I do something that I feel is innocuous and someone pounces upon it and turns it into proof of some evil malintent. I mean, I completely hate that! To use the word of the famous Pollyanna, “I abominate it!” Unfortunately, as much as we…

  • Finding Joy from Pain

    I love the Olympics. I love the events, the human-interest stories that make me friends with the athletes, and the camaraderie that is witnessed between competitors. Manmade political and geographical boundaries seem less important during these international games, and I love that. I have rooted for people from so many different countries once I learned…

  • Of Mucky Mucks & Peeled Eyes

    Several weeks ago, at work I made a comment about how this event I was trying to argue in favor of attending would be filled with “mucky mucks” from an industry that mattered to us. There was great confusion. I was looked at as if I was strange. Finally, my boss asked, “mucky mucks? What…

  • Waitin’ for the Light to Shine

    No matter the stage of life, hang on and just keep waiting for that light to shine!

  • The Advent of Joy

    This third week of Advent is focused on joy. I’ve been trying to formulate a working definition of joy, for there it’s kinda hard to quantify how it’s different from happiness or euphoria or gladness or… You get my point. When Toby sees Sunny every morning he begins jumping up and down and is about…

  • The Advent of Preparation

    The second week of Advent focuses on preparation. The scripture for this theme is from Isaiah 40:3-5: The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be…

  • Playing the “Grateful Game”

    When I was a child I loved to read the book Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter. In a nutshell, for those who don’t know the story, it is about a young orphan girl who always plays the “glad game” where she looks for something in literally any situation to be happy about. Her attitude and persistence…

  • The Advent of Hope

    Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, probably partly because it is the gateway to the wonderful Christmas season. I love the music and overall feeling of this time of year. Can you blame me? As I’m writing this I’m listening to music by Leslie Bricusse from his show Scrooge…

  • Get By With a Little Help

    The other day Toby was acting strange (not that that’s exactly new, but this was a different kind of strange). Anyway, he kept coming over to me, whimpering, and then he started getting in trouble in a different kind of way. Then Sunny started in. She whimpered and paced and licked me and paced and…

  • When There Are No Answers

    This past week has been an emotional one. As a church music lady I attend a lot of funerals and I was asked to lead the music at the funeral this week for a wonderful woman who was 81 years old. She lived an amazing life, bearing 11 children (losing two of them when they…

  • Beauty From Ashes

    I need to preface this post with the following disclaimer: I wrote this between 2 and 3:00 in the morning Sunday morning. I am not fully accountable for any mixed analogies or crazy leaps of “logic.” Just warning in advance 😁 On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his now famous 95 Theses on the…

  • Spaceships and Asteroids

    A couple weeks ago there was a breaking news story that caught my attention. NASA sent a spacecraft out with the mission of hitting an asteroid and knocking it out of orbit. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft orbited the sun for ten months searching for Dimorphos, a small space rock. On September 26th…

  • In the Eye of the Storm

    Several years ago my dear friend and I took an Anne and Diana pilgrimage to Prince Edward Island, Canada. For those who are uninitiated, PEI is the home of Anne of Green Gables and her best friend Diana, characters from a beloved series of books and a popular television miniseries. As my friend and I…

  • Lives of Quiet Desperation

    The philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea this week. Doesn’t it feel like a lot of people are surviving, but not really living? As I’ve interacted with people I’ve come…

  • The Enemy in the Glass

    My puppy is in danger. At least he thinks so. Toby, my 8-month old Bernese Mountain Dog, keeps seeing frightening dogs everywhere he looks. I first discovered this one night when he was looking out the french doors and was frantically barking. It was so intense that it made me a bit nervous, despite the…