This post is evolving because, today, I just want to play with words.

I want to write about the foam on my cup of hot chocolate. It’s fluffy, like a little cocoa cloud insulating the liquid. The foam is always my favorite part of a drink – it’s like sipping flavored air.

I want to write about yesterday morning. Stepping outside at 7:15 a.m into a breezy June day. The dawn was refreshingly cool. Much more like New York and much less like South Carolina.

I want to write about ridiculously expensive and complicated moving is. We’re only moving from one county to the next – yet, the last six weeks have been filled with an insane amount of paperwork, expenses and details. Everyone wants a deposit, everything has a hidden fee, EVERYONE WANTS OUR HARD-EARNED MONEY. Uggh. Tom and I both love to save, we get excited when we see our savings account balance rise, lately it hasn’t risen a lot .  

However, in the past month we have paid off our new home, signed, sealed and delivered the lot rental fee, utilities and home-owners insurance. We were graciously given a stove and microwave when the one in our trailer died. Our bills have all been paid, we gave to our church and bought our little sponsored girl a birthday present. Not a bad month at all.

So much of life has to do with our perspective.

I write about that constantly because I constantly need the reminder. Security and joy are NOT in circumstances. They never are. Joy is abiding. Joy is sustainable.

Joy is my marriage. Intimacy with a man who brings me incredible comfort. Joy is fighting with that man in an effort to work through our brokenness and build our relationship into something even stronger.

Joy is seeing the healing grace of God in a life. Joy is power to forgive a wrong and the humility to offer an apology. Joy is the knowledge that pain is temporary and wrongs will be made right.

Joy is working towards a common goal. Putting in weeks at work that make our vision of serving in southeast Asia a little clearer. Joy is car rides spent brainstorming the future, researching programs, paying down school loans.

When we live with contentment and gratitude we find joy and, when we find joy, our eyes are opened to a thousand bits of happiness that dance through our days.

Happiness is the blue of our new kittens eyes. Happiness is his tiny paws that have so much world left to explore. Happiness is the intricacy and color of his fur – God’s attention to the smallest details.

Burton Guster “Gus”.

Happiness is our unexpected six-month anniversary get-a-way. In July, we’re traveling to Savannah to see dear friends of ours get married (Tom is a  groomsmen). Since January we’d planned to spend an extra night exploring the city and celebrating our anniversary. A few weeks ago, due to the price of hotel rooms, we scrapped our plans then, as I browsed Hotwire yesterday I found two nights for the price of one. BAM. What a sweet gift of grace from my God. For me it’s vacation enough to wander a strange city with a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee which makes the main expense just getting there.

Happiness is kale sautéed in chicken broth.

Happiness is day-dreaming about the little red-haired baby I’ll hold in my arms one day. Happiness is imagining our daughter. Our son. My arms ache for him or her. You’re already so loved, little one.

Happiness is laughing so hard with Tom that I can’t breathe. It’s seeing friends fall in love and getting to see my husband after the long workday.

Life holds sadness and life holds happiness.

Yet, all of life can be stamped by abiding joy.