Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Joy is in the heart of the beholder

Last week, or maybe the week before, Blair at The Heir to Blair wrote about her joy - the things that make her happy, and she asked what makes our hearts happy.

I started to write about it because I like writing about happiness, but my words all felt so cliche and dumb so I clicked on the Facebook tab about the page and started mindlessly stalking.

But tonight, I'm done with finals and I'm home for almost a month and my heart is freakin' exploding with joy.

I never knew how much this house really meant to me until I left it.

Today was hard. The whole last week has been hard, but today was the hardest of them all. I was on the last stretch of the marathon that is finals week and I could barely keep running. I woke up at 8:30 a.m. to a friend popping her head in my room asking if I was ready to study yet. "I'm so tired," I said, "I just wanna sleep a little longer, I think I'll do better on the test." She said okay with a smile and left, but when I do that I can't ever really go back to sleep again. Not when I know I should be up gettin' stuff done. So we worked, I conducted an interview, showered, took a long test, finished 3 papers, packed up, dropped the papers off at professor's offices and drove home. I honestly didn't think I'd make it.

but I did.

I pulled up to my house at 3440 Forsythia (that has been my house since I was in utero) and I sat in front of it thinking about how pretty it is with the white christmas lights strung over the bushes and the big wreath my nana made right smack in the middle of the house with a spot light shining on it.

it's my house.

I walked inside to find beautifully decorated christmas cookies, the fireplace on, the dim lights of the christmas tree glistening and my momma on the couch.

and that my friends? is where I find my joy.

I find my joy sitting in this lay-z-boy that I pulled up in front of the fire place just feet from the T.V. with stockings on one side of my peripheral and the glistening christmas tree lights in the other. I find my joy in the sound of my dog's toenails on the hardwood, because that's familiar.

This is my home, it's my safe zone, and I find my joy here.

2 comments:

Caitlin said...

Love this, and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that's overjoyed to be home for the holidays! Hope you have a great day!

Megan said...

This made me tear up a little bit! Because I know exactly what you mean when you say being home is what makes you joyful... It's the little things like your dog's footsteps on the hardwood floor that you really miss when you're away at college. I'm so happy that your crazy week is over and you're finally able to relax and be home with your family :)