Free to be me (Joy)

It’s almost March and I haven’t published a single thing in my blog this year and I am perfectly ok with that.  It’s a different season, and as seasons go, sometimes I write and sometimes I simply grow.  One of the last posts I wrote was titled “Help me to find Joy.”  I wrote it as a desperate prayer as I was grappling with a season of depression but I also wrote it out of angst, that for 28 years, my name has been Joy but often enough, I am accused of not fitting that description.  To be depressed is one demon, but to have others who don’t really know me accuse me of being joy-less adds a whole other enemy to fight because I already am fighting the lies in my mind and when others suggest, I take it as Truth and my mind begins to execute, judgment and fear, failure and tears, and it takes awhile before the smoke clears. 

But what if…..what if all along, Joy was right here?  I would certainly agree that I am quiet, maybe even aloof, but I promise you I am not shatterproof.  I can count on two hands the ones that truly know the deepest sides of me, but in all reality, that’s not the worst place to be.  I’d like to think that I am loyal, pretty faithful to the end, would drop everything if I could to be there for a friend.  I am a bit like Eeyore, quietly getting by, with a pessimistic yet realistic spirit and arguably pretty shy.  But once you get to know me, I can crack a joke or two, spout off a random fact, and draw out a life story too. 

So maybe you won’t see my face next to “joy” in the dictionary and let’s be honest, that would be kind of scary…….maybe I don’t fit the world’s vision of “merry” but if I may be quite contrary…….you don’t know the burdens I carry….the things I’ve been through, the hurdles I’ve crossed, the bridges I’ve burned, the people I’ve lost, so if I’m not the “Joy” that you seek, I’m sorry but I can’t continue to be enslaved to these chains of what people think I ought, be forced and trampled into a box, to be a slave to your opinion has left my heart locked in the stocks. 

So today, I declare, by the mercies of God, that I am free to be me, because it’s that freedom that He bought, the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, He simply took me as I am.  So from now on, I hope to be, no longer found in slavery, to others opinion of me, and just hope and pray they see, that though I am a quiet wall I may be worth getting to know if you are in it for the long haul. 

Until next time,

In Christ,

Joy Lynn