Choosing or Feeling or Both?

Choosing joy. My sister in love and I were having a conversation about this recently. Here are are few of my thoughts.

Let’s talk about choosing. We all get to choose things like what flavor of ice cream and which shoes we will put on. Americans are especially good at demanding choices and I have seen crankiness and anger when choices are taken away. At the same time, we seem so incapacitated, even taking on the victim role, over choices we do not want to make.

I think love is a choice; sometimes it is an easy choice and sometimes it isn’t. Most marriages that last are because each person chooses or decides to love, regardless of how they feel in the moment. Love is more than a feeling. I am so glad that it is. God is love and that does not change based on emotion or may behavior. We love because He first loved us! Putting emotions aside is key because feelings and emotions are a response, are reactive and are out of our control.

Similarly, I believe that joy is a choice. We are commanded in scripture to take on certain actions such as to love, to be thankful, to be tenderhearted, to fear and to rejoice.  We would not be told to do them if we could not consciously decide to do them, or if they were out of our control. Yet, many people are so passive regarding these life changing qualities.

While there are emotions that we feel that we call love, joy, gratitude, fear, etc. but they are also choices!  The emotions are response and they happen to us. But, additionally they are decisions we choose and they shape and change who we are.

So I choose to love. I choose to live gratefully and with hope. An I choose to rejoice no matter what