One of the best things about travel, for us, is seeing how other people live.

Experiencing a little slice of life through their eyes and having the privilege of peeking into family life under someone else’s roof.  Our travels often include friends and family, not to mention complete strangers in addition to grandparents, and it has been wonderful.  Each family blesses us in a different way.  Each family causes me to look at life a little differently; and each family causes me to reflect with a grateful heart on the good gifts I have been given in my own family life.

I was considering these things this morning while we sat in the park, burning the half an hour between the ferry boat docking and the commencement of Sunday services at my parents’ church.  Grammy took us to a lovely little park with a bronze statue of two little children playing leap frog. The girl was on top, leaping over her little brother with her pig tails flying in the breeze. Delightful.

The inscription on the plaque next to the statue caught my eye, I cannot remember the exact quote, but the gist of it is as follows: It is not blood that binds the hearts of family members, but the joy they take in one another and sharing life together.  How true.

Someone I respect greatly says that what a child needs most is for his parents to simply delight in who he is, that no amount of discipline or instruction will come to more than a hill of beans if the child doesn’t grow in the sunshine of true joy at his mere existence.  This quote seems to embody that thought, doesn’t it?

What is joy within a family?

• Does having joy mean that every day is a party and we aren’t allowed to cry?
• Does joy mean faking it for family and friends when we do cry?
• Does joy mean that I as Mom have to be happy every minute of every day?
• Do my children?
• If we fail in this (as we inevitably will) does that mean that we do not have joy in our family?

Of course not. 

Joy is not, primarily, an emotion.

Sure, sometimes we feel joyful, and that is a joy!  But even on the days we do not, we can still choose joy.

Every morning when I wake I have two choices:

1. Act out of the tired groggy way I feel: “You kids be quiet and go play.  I need tea.  I need quiet.  Unless you’re bringing me the first in the manner of the second, take a hike!
2. Choose joy. I can smile. That muscular movement can be produced on demand, regardless of emotional state.  I can choose my words: “Good morning children.  How did you sleep?  Why don’t you sit quietly and eat.  I’ll fix some tea and read a chapter of our book to you.”

Choosing joy is not a matter of denying how you feel and hiding behind a facade.  It is a matter of focus.  I am still tired.  I still need my tea.  I still need some quiet, but, my children are gifts and blessings, they are people too and they have needs and wants this morning.

Choosing joy this morning means seeing them as a delight and communicating that to them instead of seeing them as an albatross around my selfish neck and communicating that. 

We are responsible for the emotional climate of our homes

As unfair as it may seem, we parents are largely responsible for the climate in our homes. If we purpose to choose joy, then everyone tends to join us.  If we are grumpy mean and selfish, the kids are too.

I don’t like it.  That’s more responsibility than I want after a sleepless night with barfing boys.

Nonetheless, it is true.  Time and again this fact has made itself apparent to me in the most humbling of ways.  However, knowing it and acting upon it are two totally different things, aren’t they.

You may not know this about me, but I am a horribly selfish person at my core.

• I want my tea in the morning before ANYTHING else and I want someone else to pour the cream and sugar in it and deliver it to me in bed.
• I want a bubble bath after breakfast every day.
• I want someone else to do laundry.
• I do not want to explain that math lesson for the sixth time or apply consequences for the same offense fifteen times in one day for the four year old.

I just don’t.

I love my family. I chose this life, but every time we spend a week at the Four Seasons I secretly wish to stay there forever in unrealistic luxury with smiling men delivering gourmet lunches with orchids on top of the rice.

Don’t we all? Really?  Maybe you don’t. It is likely that I’m the most selfish person I know and other parents don’t struggle with this.  On the outside, they don’t seem to… but I wonder.

Choosing joy will be one of those life long projects for me.

Of this I am sure.

It takes daily effort for me to see the good in people first, to celebrate the diversity within my own family instead of trying to “fix” people. I have to purpose to extend grace to my husband, my children, the driver in front of me in traffic, the bank clerk and the unbearably incompetent staff at the Burger King in Troy, New York.

It has occurred to me, over the years, that joy within a family finds its roots in grace. 

• Grace allows people to be human, meets them where they REALLY are instead of where we wish they were.
• Grace loves and accepts the person and looks for the positive even when there are behaviors that need to change.
• If we extend grace, living with joy becomes so much easier.

This summer cultivating even more joy is one of my projects. I want my children to grow up surrounded by deep, abiding joy. Not the crazy slap happy silliness that some call joy, but the solid unfading joy that comes from loving acceptance, grace extended and the deep satisfaction of pursuing life and our dreams together.

About Jennifer Miller

Jennifer Miller has written 80 post in this blog.

Married to my knight in shining armor, Mama to the fabulous four, I must write to breathe. I'm homeless by choice, a nomad by birth and am most at home sleeping my tent, shopping in the souqs of North Africa and wandering the highlands of Guatemala. My life is an "edventure!"

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