My sister called me an optimist. It was just the other day when we were on the phone and I tried to shrug it off but it stuck. I am a daily gratitude lister for years now. I am a joy-finder and I pray for mine and my family’s lights to shine daily. I believe in the always-working-to-the-good part of God. I’ve camped out there during difficult seasons and He’s always proven that Truth. Do these things make me an optimist?
In this specific conversation I was saying that I had been praying for our mutual friends to find tiny joys in each day. You know, when the remote is where you left it, when the hot water is just the perfect temp of burn but not scald. When the sun peeks in the morning windows and you can literally feel God. When you hear a phrase that makes you tear up and smile at the same time. When the coffee is fresh and hot and the baked good, that it’s obviously paired with, is gooey and just barely undercooked. When you hear a baby laugh in a public place or see a little girl in lipstick and plastic high heels in the grocery store. When the song plays that makes you worship, hands raised in the carpool line or,that oldie but goodie that gets you dancing in the kitchen. Those are the tiny joys. They happen at home or away, at all times, and any time. They are so small you could miss them, which makes finding them and recognizing them even sweeter. They could almost be nothing but somehow they mean so much. I think women notice them easier because they are packed full of emotion and beauty. Tiny joys feel like windows into heaven or glimpses of the great glory of our Lord. They are the next breath you feel like you can’t take in the hardest moments. Those times in life when the world seems dark and hopeless, tiny joys are the seeds of hope awaiting perfect bloom. Tiny joys heal broken and hurting souls because they sneak into us and tie us back to our Jesus. They remind us of His knowing and working and they help us live again and again and again.
I don’t know if I would call myself an optimist because I recognize the hard and ugly for what it is but, I am someone who will always believe in better and greater and more beautiful than I could ask or imagine. I try to live with eyes open and always looking up and expecting some bit of heaven, some peace, some love. I find that living this way helps me see the good, literally. I can more easily find the joy and my prayer is that this is always true of me. I pray it for others too. Might we see with our spiritual eyes the goodness of our God in this physical, sometimes broken world. May we always know tiny joys. May we feel whisper kisses of our Heavenly Father and may they fill where we might feel emptied and heal our deepest hurts.
