Finding My Joy

A week or so ago I had linked from one blog to another and came across an auction for a fundraiser to raise money for a family where the father and mother had been in a plane crash and were both critically injured. The father was burned over 30% of his body and the mother over 80%. They are LDS and she has been blogging for a while. Then last night there was a story about them on KSL about how her blogging friends had raised over $100,000 for her and were helping the family with support and love. So, I decided to go to her blog- it's called the Nie Nie Dialogues (or something like that, you can link to it through KSL). I was reading about her life and the things she did for her children and thinking as she posts about her husband's flying, she doesn't know what's coming. Her children are living with their aunt in Utah now, it will be months before they know for sure what the outcome will be for either parent. They are looking at millions of dollars in hospital bills.
I started thinking that what I felt from her blog, is that she focused on the positive of her life. She lived it and loved it with all her heart. And while I am sure there were hard times and difficult things, she focused on the happy and the love.
So, I am going to try to not focus on the sad/hard/messy/stinky/laundry things of my life, but embrace the 2 year old kisses, the love of all things Wii, the first-grade toothless smiles and the man of my dreams I get to share my life with. Not that I won't continue to post the poopy messes I find myself in, because I believe in being real with my life, in living beyond the facade (it doesn't read as well without the little line on the c, but I'm not that good with fonts) of what others see. But, I will try to notice the smiles, the triumphs, the milestones, the laughs, the tickle fights, the getting along, the dirty, happy faces I wash in the shower each night. Because you never know when the fairy tale will turn into a nightmare, and when the thing you never thought you would have to face is staring you down and turning you on your head. When all the little things of the days and weeks before that totally annoyed you and made you mad, are the very things you wish you could have back.
Here's to letting go of the small stuff. Holding on to the joy, finding it and making it each day. Here's to the happiness that waits for each of us in every single day if we will look for it and hold on to it.
I'm off to go find mine.