Choose Joy?

What does that mean? I took the easy way out and googled it...well I came across a blog that seemed to sum it up better than I ever could. Read it and I think it will open your eyes like it did mine. Basically, joy is a choice and requires faith. What a challenge for all of us no matter what you are going through.

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001069.cfm

I guess for me....to choose joy wasn't just about a name choice for our daughter, which neither me nor my husband can take the credit for. It was really my Mom. I can't recount her exact story, but basically she had fallen asleep with a christian radio station on and caught part of a Charles Stanley sermon. Intermixed with praying and sleeping those were the words that kept going through her mind as a word from God.....choose joy! Perhaps a name? Maybe, but the bigger meaning was to choose joy in this situation despite there being nothing joyful about being told that the unborn baby you are carrying has no chance at life outside of you womb.

I wish I could say it was as easy as that to choose joy. Joy's name is a reminder to me to just trust in God and choose joy no matter the circumstance. It is a daily struggle...I must admit. It's so easy to succomb to self-pity and get in the "why me God, why my baby?" mode, which I do quite often. I find it is just a vicious circle of which there is no escapse. It is at times like this where I have to stop myself and say...."Hold on a minute, let's refocus this."

God chose Lewis and I to be Joy's parents. For whatever reason. As difficult as eveything about this is I could not imagine my life without Joy in it. I have to type through my tears right now for as painful as it is to think of our life and family without her in it the way we would want. I couldn't imagine not being her Mommy. To realize what I am saying in this is truly God, because to me that is to say that I would choose to go through all of this pain again if the other option was not to know her at all. That just boggles my mind because it almost doesn't sound normal.

Earlier in this journey I just thought that it would be so much easier to deal with everything if I just miscarried and lost the baby. Now, I consider each day Joy is still with us and alive as a gift from God. I guess you could say this is how I am deciding to choose joy in this situation.