Shout For Joy

I sat down this afternoon to crank out our poster for this school year's family theme while I still had access to my 7-day free trial of Photoshop and was excited to blog about it for tonight's post.  The fact that I'm trying to wax eloquent about Shouting for Joy while I'm sitting next to a certain 8th grader who is freaking out over trying to do her Algebra 1 homework and needing lots of help and TLC is most definitely ironic.

Nevertheless, Joy is what we're aiming for this year!  Hahaha.  Last year our theme was "We Can Do It" and when I blogged about it last fall, I noted that I felt really strongly that we needed a mantra to remind us that we can do hard things -- and that I was nervous to find out what hard things were going to come our way.  Well, we found out soon enough.  This past year has been really hard in a lot of ways for almost all of us. From losing a baby to wrenching the kids away from our home of the past 5 years to enduring lots and lots of life stress and work stress while trying to manage the transition from there to here -- it's been rough.  

But here's the thing that has come to my mind over and over again during the last couple of months --"Weeping may endure for a night, but JOY cometh in the morning." (Psalm 30:5)  We've done a lot of weeping over the last year.  I think it's time now to Shout for Joy.  Life is never perfect, or perfectly easy, but I think if we look for it, we can find the joy in our journey.  That's what we're aiming for, at least.  ;)  (And yes, we have a new cheer for after family prayers and it's possibly my favorite.  If only because I know the kids think it's so weird.  Hahaha.  After prayers are over, Scott or I will call out, "Are we ready to Shout for JOY???" And then everyone joins in with, "3-2-1 -- HUZZAH!!!" with hands raised in praise in the air.  You know you want to be there with us, too.  Hahahahahaha.)  

{Previous year's themes: We Can Do It; Forward Pressing Forward; Every Day, Every Day, Every Day; Hold to the Rod}