Choose Joy, and living a life that matters

Daisies by nicolas_gent @ Flicker.com

A warm and friendly sweet chocolate welcome to readers coming over from The Gyspy Mama for Five Minute Friday. I usually participate in the Friday funfest, but knew I would be headed out of town early this morning, so I planned a post. Later, I saw the twitter feed mentioned below, “How do you say forever goodbye?”, and my heart skipped many a beat as I followed the thread. This post came out of that internet journey, but now I share it with you, for Five Minute Friday: Joy, in honor of Sara, and how she lived a life that mattered.

For any of you that are not familiar with my story, I had the joyful experience of going through the coaching process this spring, and one of the more difficult exercises I did was imagining how people would remember me after I had passed on.

As you can imagine, going down that path can be uncomfortable and unsettling, but it can also serve as a stark reminder of how we are living our lives now and how we would prefer to be living them instead.

Are we present in the present? Or are we always living for the future, for that promotion, for that recognition, for the big payday, for the biggest, best and most expensive everything?

Do we take the time for what is important as opposed to the urgent?

Are we available to and for those we love? Do we show how we love them, every day, with all those little things that add up to so much?

Do we show them how to live, and do we lavish them with grace and forgiveness?

I recently came to know of someone who did, and who was all of these things.

But before that, all I knew was that I enjoyed her blog, Choose Joy. I admired her writing style, her sense of  humor and her ability to see the good in a situation, to choose joy, especially since she had a debilitating, painful, chronic illness, and had been confined to her four walls since she was 29 years old.

I learned so much more about her of late.

I was checking my Twitter feed in the morning, and tears began to fill my eyes as I read the latest message from the site In Courage, “How do you say forever goodbye”?

They were referring to Sara, or Gitzengirl, as she was known on her blog, and God was calling her home.

Her imminent passing prompted an outpouring of grief, but accompanying that as well was a veritable groundswell of thankfulness for the love, and hope, admiration and joy, and gratitude at just knowing Sara, of being able to bask in her light, of a life that mattered tremendously.

I cannot speak to knowing her as a person, but these folks can and did. I invite you to read about Sara through the eyes of those whose lives she touched in such deep and rich ways.

A mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.  ~Proverbs 27:19

Sara’s mirror reflected a luminous, beautiful soul, indeed.

Lysa TerKeurst: My Last Text to Sara

Matthew Paul Turner: Oh, How my heart aches

Jessica Turner: Choose Joy-Celebrating Sara

If you are on Twitter, you can find more at #choosejoy.

Question: How can you choose joy today?

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