Sparks of Joy

I recently returned from a delightful vacation which included seeing dear high school classmates at a Branson, MO get-together (no, we didn’t graduate from that area). In addition to enjoying visits with classmates I hadn’t seen in four years, I got to ride in one couple’s Mustang convertible, see a couple of good shows, take a railroad excursion of the area in a dome car, and enjoy my son’s company on the road trip there and back to Ft. Worth.  

 

Branson bridge from train window

The first part of our return trip back was gorgeous because of the beautiful vistas of all the GREEN trees. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen so many green trees, which, I imagine, have now turned to glorious colors of orange, red, yellow and brown with many shades in between.

Jeff at lookout on Hwy 7

My trip from Elko was actually to celebrate Jeff’s birthday with him on the 14^th but he graciously agreed to drive me to Branson for the first weekend. We were back in TX by Sunday night so he could go to work the next day and I could begin to settle in for the next ten days.

Happy birthday Whole 30 style

I got to do a lot of reading done (and actually some writing on Debra, too) and two of the books I read are really what I want to write about now. In my mind they are linked, but that sounds rather preposterous as the first author is a Buddhist “tidying” consultant and the second, a Christian psychologist:)

Spark Joy is a method of sorting through all your “stuff”, by specific categories, deciding which item gives you joy (meaning you want to keep it). If it doesn’t give you joy, you give it away or throw it away—the last, depending upon its condition. The six categories she lists are Clothes, Books, Papers, Kitchen, Miscellaneous, and Sentimental, and the categories are to be sorted in that order. Once all the sorting is done you are ready to make permanent storage for all the things which give you joy. The book is small and easy to read and she also has some Youtube videos on her method which is called the Kon Mari Method of Tidying.

The next impactful book I read was Dr. Henry Cloud’s Nine Things You Simply Must Do to Succeed in Love and Life.  I have to admit, I found the title a bit cheesy and figured I wouldn’t get through more than a chapter or two. But who can resist chapter headings like, “Act Like an Ant,” or “Hate Well?”

I came away from reading the book motivated to re-memorize piano pieces that I will have to learn a measure or phrase at a time because of my vision limitations, reviewing finger-picking on my guitar—and implementing a lot of what I’d read about what I now call “sparks of joy.”

When Jesus said He “came to give us abundant life,” I believe the sparks of joy we come to recognize in our lives may well be a piece of that abundance. May your day contain many of those “joy sparks.”