I'm so grateful my parents named me "Joy" because it often serves as a reminder that life is full of joy if I am willing to look.
Since I've been reminiscing lately, my mind settled on my first job out of college—a clerk at the Learning Express in San Antonio and the joy I got from working there (One of my dreams is still to own my own toy store). In fact, I really love toys in general. At The Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey I ran the museum store and got to buy all sorts of educational toys. I got to be a Park Ranger. Now I teach 8th graders.
Then there was the boyfriend had two daughters and previously quirky aspects of my personality suddenly made tons of sense. Like that I love fun night lights because I am afraid of the dark. That I am afraid of the dark. Or that I love to do crafts and play games. That I had a Winnie the Pooh wedding shower [no comment]. That the man I was married to for 9 years who wanted to always take the scenic route, not work in an office and was willing to drive 3 hours just to each good bar-b-que.
I didn't seem to be able to have fun when I was a kid. The parts I do remember were mostly painful and definitely not fun and life was a very serious business. My adult life, however, has always been full of these opportunities to never "grow up".
I've just realized that perhaps these have been the compensations my grandmother always told me God provides. Perhaps God has been with me all along, giving me night lights and kids and 8th graders to allow me to enjoy life now in a way I was never able to in childhood. How sweet it is to learn we were looked after all along!
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