Hanging on Joy

I know I should be writing more, channeling my thoughts into coherent text to salve my soul. Instead I am trapped in a motionless place, where no thoughts stray through my head. The constant mental chatter that I have lived with for years, the planning, the dreaming, the ideas, are all gone, lost in the void of stress as I push my way forward to the future.
I'm fighting my own demons right now, trying to remember that all will be as it is meant to be, but the real struggle is to hang on to Joy.

A good friend once told me that Happiness is like a butterfly, it comes and goes on its own, and you cannot predict it or hold on to it, but that Joy is a choice you make every day. What a revolutionary thought, to CHOOSE Joy, even in the midst of chaos, even in a rotten time, or bad luck or a time of grief or sadness. To choose to reach out and be joyful about the gifts we are granted, even as things fall through our fingers like water.

Joy has become the hook I try to hang my hat on. Finding that hook in the darkness is going to take some luck or some skill, but I WILL find it, and when I do, I will hang on Joy. And Joy shall lift me up.