JOY: The reasons I want to pursue my God-Sized Dreams

Well I wanted to do this linkup with Holley Gerth on Tuesday, but as you can see I'm running a little bit behind.  Life's just like that at times and I'm reminded to give myself grace. The last two weeks have included Spring Break, my parent's visit from Michigan, Mike's 40th, and a cruise to Cozumel and back. Fun, fun times. I will write more on all that later, right now I want to focus on the linkup.

Holley's linkup is about what brings you joy, especially as it relates to your God-sized dream. You can read so many other encouraging stories by clicking on over here. But my 'joy'...

My first God-sized Dream involves encouraging Family Togetherness.  More laughter, more time interacting, more relationship building  -- continuing to do this in my family, and inspiring other families to do the same.  I'd love to do this through developing some apps, but financially, I'm not sure that is in the near future.  So behind the scenes, I've been asking, how else can I do this?  But Holley's question gets to the heart, why do I want to do this?

Why? Because when I hear that my ideas inspire other families, encourage happiness and promote familes to spend time together -- well it just puts a literal smile on my face! I believe that healthy families are the heart and soul of our society - and yet I see so much brokenness in families in our society. That brokenness makes my heart ache. And sometimes even makes me angry - as in, I want to do something to change this.

I've noticed that I've found various ways to do this throughout my life -- through my brief career as a social worker, mentoring a teen mom, writing newsletters that inspire family togetherness, through sharing of ideas through my own blog, and this past year - writing for The Good Stuff Guide. My ideas add happiness to my own family, and I admit, it brings me joy when I see them 'liked' and 'repinned' and replicated -- because I hope that they are bringing joy to that family too!

My second God-sized Dream involves possibly publishing my story of healing and knowing joy again, as it relates to the dark journey I had to take with the murder of Mike's mom and sister and the injustice of the trial that followed.  Why does this bring me joy? Through this tragedy and journey I have had to take -- I have discovered joy again, something I didn't know if I'd ever feel again.  And I know others who are in these dark places wonder the same thing.  And it brings me joy knowing that I might be able to encourage them to keep on walking on down their dark path, that perhaps my story may offer them hope to take one more step. Perhaps God can use my story to help them heal, to move on, and to know joy again. This is joy giving to me. This is why I want to pursue this dream.

Also, since I'm speaking on joy, I have to mention, I'm reading an amazing book right now by Kay Warren, called Choosing Joy. Oh, so, so good! I will have to do a separate post on that book too! (Oh, so much I want to write, so little time!)