Can you package JOY?
Can you box up baby laughter, the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking, the feel of flannel on skin? How do you capture joy?
You write everything down numbering those gifts, counting your blessings, etching memories with pen on paper. As you keep a gratitude journal, live eucharisteo, your outlook on life changes. Your circumstances don’t change but how you react to them does. You begin to see God’s hand in your life. Not just in your life but that He is carrying your life.
Can you package JOY?
No, but you can share it and spread it and scatter its seeds to grow in others’ lives.
Do you know someone who can use a little more JOY in their life?
Can YOU use a little more joy?
I’m giving away two gratitude kits. Each winner of this giveaway will receive TWO Joy-in-a-box packages, one to keep, and one to pass on to another who is in need of JOY.
Contents of each Joy-In-A-Box package:
* The printables from Ann Voskamp’s post The Best Gift – {a JOY banner, bookmark, graphics to decorate a gratitude journal}
* One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
* Monthly Joy Dare printables {found at A Holy Experience}- for ideas on what to number as gifts
* Two Talks about gratitude – The Choice to be Grateful by Pres. Henry B. Eyring and Gratitude a Path to Happiness by Sister Bonnie D. Parkin
* Dove Chocolate – because chocolate ALWAYS helps
* a nest decoration made from this tutorial
* either a Tree of Life necklace from Sonu Designs or a Birds Nest Necklace from Amula Designs.
* a blank sketchbook to decorate as a gratitude journal
* beautiful pens to write with using my pretty pen tutorial
* bookmarks from Lilac and Lavendar
* a perpetual calendar featuring Thankful verses of scripture
* A personalized music CD with uplifting music:
Giveaway Details:
- To enter please leave a comment telling me something that has brought you JOY today.
- For additional entries leave comments on any blog posts for this month of November.
- Giveaway ends November 15th at 5 pm PST.
Today my joy was knowing that my daughter was spending quality time with her father downstairs while I napped upstairs. Oh, and the primary program was wonderful, and now we’re done with it for the year! On to Christmas songs! 🙂
Watching my kids play with an air mattress, folding it in half with one or two kids in the middle to make a “sandwich” brought me joy today. That and taking a little nap during Sunday School. 😉
Today I felt joy from start to finish of our primary program… My little nursery kids (now sunbeams), my own kids, all of them just did a fabulous job.., the message? I know my savior loves me!
Seeing my teenage kids laugh together brings me joy. Also, running, naps, and a clean house. 🙂
Hearing our primary children near testimony through song and word brought tears to my eyes and joy to my heart.
Sleeping with a baby tucked under each arm last night brought me joy.
Listening to my baby’s heartbeat at the doctor this morning made me smile 🙂
Watching the beautiful sunrise this cool autumn morning!
getting my two teenage kids off to school, on time, after having a nice sit down hot breakfast, without any fighting, bickering, or unkind nagging on my part. a little piece of heaven on earth and total joy.
My 3 1/2 month old’s spit bubble raspberries. I can’t help but smile every time he starts blowing them. Those and his spontaneous smiles remind me to delight in and find joy in the little things in life.
After I got my teenage boys out the door to seminary, I got to read and look through the Ensign from General Conference. I have joy in knowing that we have a prophet on this earth and I have faith to follow him.
While I do find JOY in my family daily (and sometimes a little not joy), today I will high light a coworker that stood up for me and really helped a contractor understand our policies.
My teenage daughter, who has struggled with her faith and testimony over the last year and a half to two years, started singing the hymns in church voluntarily, and today I caught her humming a hymn as she went about the house picking her things up. Joy doesn’t even begin to describe it!
Today I found joy in watching one of my preschool students put their arm around another student and say “You can play with this with me.” I love to see them show love to another.
I felt joy today when witnessing acts of kindness between family members.
My early morning seminary class brings me joy. It is often brutal to get up at five in the morning and try teach a dozen sleepy teenagers, but I love those kids! They have stolen my heart. And to see their faces when something clicks, that is a moment full of joy!
Watching my 4 month-old twins starting to interact and smile and “talk” to each other has brought a lot of wonderment and Joy today! And then to see their 2 yo sister give them sweet kisses added to the joy.
I finished writing an “About” page for a new blog I just created for my missionary daughter. 😀 Now I just need to send the blog URL to her friends. Helping my missionary share her missionary moments with friends and family brings me joy! Corine 😀
Today my joy comes from my son telling me that he has met his eternal companion. That he is marrying the woman who makes him complete. That he feels blessed beyond measure!
Joy is knowing that I have a Father in Heaven who Loves me unconditionally and I Love him. What Joy it will be when I can kneel before him on that Great Day.
I have joy this morning for my family. Three are still snuggled in their beds and one is busily getting ready for school. Children are a joy!
My husband went out and scraped my windows and started my car for me this morning because he knows how much I hate the cold!
My joy today was finding that the microfilmed records from my Italian ancestral towns are now available ONLINE at FamilySearch! So happy, I don’t have to drive far any more to look at microfilm. My family is just waiting to be discovered online, so much more available to me and from the comfort of my home. The thought, just makes me smile!!
I feel joy when my baby smiles at me. I love her wide open, gummy smile. It is joyous!
I find joy today in knowing my struggling adult child is watched over. Family, name put in the temple, medical help, prayer, and love all working in His time to help this child to do and be better.
My 4 year old son gave me a foam heart and said I could have it so I can remember him all day long.
I found joy in cleaning things out for our upcoming move! Somehow I can’t find your email address, and I wanted to share a little more with you about what’s going on. Would you email me when you get a chance?! Thanks!!
I felt joy when I took the time to play a little game with my two-year-old. Playing is so hard for me to do!
I felt joy as I watched my family laugh and play together.
Today we watched another family’s children as a swap–so sometime soon they will watch our kids. The prospect of a date with hubby=JOY!
My two-year old teasing us. She is so playful and fun and is laughing along the way.
Nursing my babies brought me inexplicable joy.
Reading scriptures as a family every morning brings me indescribable joy — especially as we discuss the scriptures and I see that my kids are actually “getting” it!
One special joy this week (every week) was the arrival of my missionary son’s weekly email. Even more joyful were the pictures he attached. It wasn’t so much the historical marker he was leaning on, nor what the marker said. It wasn’t the comradely way he and his companion had their arms stretched across each others’ shoulders, though I am glad he has been blessed with ‘companionable’ companions. It might have been the good news about his investigators, but it wasn’t.
My joy was a joy only a mother could experience: the mere sight of his soft brown eyes shaded by eyebrows that used to be thin but are darkening and becoming more bushy; his ready smile exposing the teeth that had the braces removed the day before he entered the MTC; his long, slender arms; his capable hands that, from the time he was young, created, glued back together, Humpty-Dumpty-like, every broken dish, vase, or cup as if it were a puzzle; and, oh, his well-fed cheeks – I could feel them through the computer screen. Those were the cheeks that, up until the moment we parted at the MTC, I caressed and kissed whenever I could get away with it.
Sometimes, between Mondays, he gets lost to me. Intent on my everyday tasks of schooling two daughters, keeping the laundry pile to a minimum, the never-ending necessity of driving someone somewhere, the pull of face book, working out the details of a church calling, the never-ending harvest (freezing carrots and diced zucchini, making salsa and jam), I forget to think about him until I pass his boots that we purposely left resting by the bench in the mudroom.
So, when Monday rolls around and finally the ‘inbox’ has a (1) by it, I can’t click on it fast enough. There, in whatever length, await words actually processed through the mind and heart of one of the boys I love. If there’s a picture, I gaze at those eyes, those cheeks, that smile, oblivious to the color of his tie, the barn in the background or a photobomb. I recollect his baby ostrich hair, his big baby browns, and his soft baby cheeks. Dreamily I look forward to the day when I can put my hands to those cheeks and kiss one and then the other, drinking him in.
And that’s about all the joy I can handle for one week.
One big joy for me has been a visit from my mom before she and my dad leave on their mission Monday to the Congo in Africa!
I got to spend the entire day shopping with my sister and ended it all by going to our local high school play. It was pretty joyful.
Stepping on dry, crunchy, fall leaves brings me joy everyday.
I heard lots of children’s happy voices singing at church today.