JoyKeeperSample

 A Brand-New Day 

It started as a promising day, with lots of good things packed in. Until everything started going wrong. Someone got impatient, then someone else got mad, and someone’s feelings were hurt.

Suddenly, the good day was a mess over a bunch of little things.

Have you experienced this? I think we all have.

When this happens, and it will, it produces a lot of immediate reactions. It may even tempt us to hold on to that one bad day, and we traipse along with unsettled unforgiveness, unresolved anger, or ongoing bitterness.

One bad day doesn’t have to become a bad life.

One bad moment doesn’t have to produce a landslide of choices we regret later.

There will be imperfect days, and we know that going in. Someone will say the wrong thing or get on that last nerve. That might even be us, but let’s not forget: Unresolved feelings lead to longtime wounds.

Maybe that wound is in your relationship with someone you love.

Maybe that wound is in you, and you’re tired of it.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you resolve the issue—at least in your own heart. He promises to give us wisdom. This helps us measure one bad moment against a hundred great ones with the same people. He’ll lead us to mercy as we consider the times we’ve arrived at an event stressed and out of sorts, wearing our grouchy pants.

He reminds us to offer grace for ourselves.

He moves us away from unresolved and unhealthy paths to begin a brand new one.

TRUTH: God is aware of who you are becoming.

REFLECTION: Create a map of where you want to go. Write words like free, joyful, unburdened, or whatever comes to mind as you pray. Create a second map. If there’s anything taking you in the opposite direction, write those words down too. Ask God to redirect you, and cross them out, one by one.

#prayerstarter: Jesus, I’ve held on to these feelings for far too long. I don’t want to be defined by one day or one bad moment. I choose to live every day fully. There are things you want to show me and long to give me. I empty my heart of that one bad day to make room for the things you want to do in me. In Jesus’ name, amen.