It's me, Charity

This post was written at two different times in one day. As you can see at the middle it drastically changes. I struggled with whether to share this or not. This past year I have strove to become more like Mary in Luke 2:19 "And she pondered these things in her heart" But this is my life, and the reality that my family and I are currently walking through. This is my Birthday week. By far it is my favorite week of the year! When time gets closer and closer to 2-27, I become giddy with anticipation. I love this week. This year, this week is not so fabulous. Life, circumstances, are all hitting on my beloved week of the year. Instead of finding myself excited for my Birthday, I almost want it to be over and huddled in a ball on my couch. I am trying to be excited and happy, but in reality I am just going through the motions and trying to get through each day. My Grandma is in the end stages of cancer. Now we come to the real reason I am in a "funk" this week. He

A little story for today's post on Joy! This afternoon I was running some errands before teaching. I stopped at the Grocery store to pick up a few items. While I was shopping an announcement came over the loudspeaker that in two minutes there was going to be a giveaway of FREE ITEMS by the bakery.  Well, I love free items (to put it lightly), so I strolled over to the Bakery area and found a worker girl set up with a little table and station and all kinds of products. A small crowd of us gathered close to her and she started her spiel. The first item we received was a cleaning rag. Kind of like a sham-wow. It was pink and I was excited! After we all got our cleaning rags she starts in on a demonstration of these incredibly nifty lids. A lid to end all lids! (I forgot my phone otherwise I would have taken a picture) Basically this lid fit on any kind of bowl, even cookware and skillets! It depressed and stuck to things like magic! She held containers with colored liquid upsi

 Everyone who has ever worked with me is going to be shocked by this. BUT, for the first year since I was a child, I decided to celebrate Valentine's Day! That's right! No more wearing all black! Yes, I was one of THOSE people! I remember when I worked at the Tax office during college, my coworkers would always get me to break out of my black for Valentine's Day but i refused to. Well to make up for lost time, I decided to have a WEEK OF PINK!! Go big or go home!  So we started off with Monday, I wasn't feeling so great, so I'm sporting my pink glasses, a comfy sweater, and I threw on my scarf and a sparkly headband to actually look like I tried to look decent.  Tuesday my antibiotics were kicking in, so I looked much better! ha!  My shirt has a really cool knot on it that you can slightly see in the right hand corner of the picture. It was a 3.00 find from a RARE trip to Walmart last summer!  Jeans, and my cowboy boots. They are soooo comfy, howe

Thought I'd forgotten?!Nope,  Just a little slow on the blogging today! I've had a few opportunities to try and #ChooseJoy this past week. I had a really busy week last week, Friday I woke up with stabbing pains in my ear. Never a good sign. I'd been fighting off getting an ear infection for about a week and a half and I was really worried I would be miserable on Saturday, which was one of the busiest days of the week for me. I had a competition that I was accompanying a student for in the morning and then in the evening I had a concert at a Nursing home. God was gracious to me and allowed me to get thru my saturday without getting sick! I will admit though when I woke up Sunday morning for church and couldn't breathe and felt awful, my first thought was AWWW MAN! You've got to be kidding me! I want to go to church! Our sermon is on JOY today! (ohhhh the irony!) However it just took a minute for me to realize that God had answered my prayers! He waited

Whoa! It is Week 5 already??! It's February which means my BIIRRRTTTHHDAAAYYYYY is just right around the corner! If you know me at all, you know I have a massive love for my Birthday so that itself gives me great joy!! ;) So last week I left off with the teaser about what my Piano Studio is going to do to be #JoyGivers365. At the end of March, I am taking a group of students with me to a local retirement center/nursing home that I frequent, and we are going to put on a concert for the residents!   For several months now, as a side part of my business, I have been visiting different nursing homes/retirement centers in the area and playing hour long concerts for the residents. In all honestly they really bless me more than I could ever bless them!  Since I am at some particular ones once at month, I try to change things up a bit, and add some interesting things to my concerts. At Christmas I did a Musical Nativity and read Luke 2 interspersed with songs that matched up w