“Choosing to have joy is not naively thinking everything will be easy. It is courageously believing that there is still hope, even when things get hard. 
     — Morgan Harper Nichols

Living in the world today . . . feels kinda hard. I’m sure it has always been hard, at different times for different people in different ways. But it feels particularly challenging – for me, for a lot of us – right now, at this point in time. To counter the despairing feelings (which always feel very close, just under the surface for me), I’ve decided to . . . look for hope, be especially kind, shine my light, share my joy.

But if I’m going to share my joy . . . I first need to gather it up.

So I’m trying to be very intentional about noticing the little things that bring moments of joy to my days. I’m hoping that noticing these little . . . pieces of joy . . . might become a sort of habit for me. And maybe that habit will tweak the way I view the world. And maybe I can pass that along. Maybe if I share my joy, I’ll encourage others to notice their own.

So today I offer this piece of joy . . .

Yeah. It’s my front door. You might remember that we had some work done to “spruce up” the exterior of our house a couple of years ago. We had actually started the project just ahead of the pandemic, so things were quite delayed by various shutdowns and supply chain issues . . . and then our new front door got stuck on one of those container ships, which really mucked up the timing for the project.

Anyway.
About that door.

I know I’ve mentioned here before . . . that our house faces west and we live on a hill where we get some really awesome sunset views. So when I was choosing a new front door, I opted for one that has quite a bit of glass. Beveled glass with prisms built in, to be specific. First, it was a pretty door that picked up some of the lines of the architecture of our house. But mostly, I chose the door because of those prisms . . . and what they might do when the sun caught them at the just-right moment.

Because of the movement of Earth as it travels around the sun, our front door doesn’t always “pick up” the sunsets. Those just-right moments don’t happen all year long. But they do in the winter, and particularly in January, when the angle of the sun setting hits those windows – and all those prisms – and does . . . well, what you see in the photo at the top of this post.

And because winters tend to be very, very dreary here in Michigan – with heavy cloud cover, this doesn’t happen every day. Or even most days. But the other day, I happened to come out of the bedroom that doubles as my office upstairs at the perfect time to see  . . . this.

The sunset was perfectly aligned with our front door.
And the prisms were prism-ing all over the walls.

JOY!

If I’d not come out of my office at that exact moment . . . if I’d been out running around . . . if I’d been busy in another part of the house . . . I’d have missed it.

But I didn’t miss it. I was there to notice that particular moment. And it was definitely . . . a piece of joy.

Keep your eyes – and your hearts – open to joy, my friends.
It’s still there, even though the days feel dark.

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I’m going to share all my pieces of joy in a photo gallery here in my field notes. Take a peek if you need a moment of  joy.