The Adventures of the Nonn's: JOY

At church last year I went out of my comfort zone and joined a large women's Bible study. It was a Beth Moore study and it was good. It was hard for me to go the first night because I knew no one, as our church is quite big, but the small group that I was assigned to was nice. So when this fall began, I was SO looking forward to joining a study again, but it became painfully obvious that me and the girls were overbooked. Mara has speech twice a week until school starts mid-October, where she will be attending Mon-Thurs for 3 hours every morning; Tuesdays I have school all day while the girls go to daycare; Wednesdays are storytime at the local library and AWANA for Samara; Thursdays are MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers), which is GREAT! and soccer for Samara. While I am NOT a fan of how busy we are, I find that everything that we have on our calendar is VERY important for our family. Mara obviously needs her speech therapy, I need a hot breakfast and some adult convo, and storytime, AWANA and soccer are great for Mara. SO, with all that said, no group Bible study for me. The great thing was, though, is that the Bible study also has an online part to it, so I can do it!

Anyway, the study is on Divine Joy and I think that this is just perfect for me. So many times I have struggled with understanding joy outside of the American standard, commonly misunderstood feeling of happiness. I wanted to know the 'Divine' portion of it. With this big change in my life of being home with two children and contemplating homeschooling our children along with going to school full-time and Travis starting a new job, our lives have been in upheaval and things seemed to be anything but 'joyful.' But I think that I have the wrong definition of Joy. While I am not sure of God's perspective of Joy, I am anxious for this study to help me learn more.