A few days ago, some of my closest friends came over for dinner to celebrate my birthday. I wasn’t in the country for it, and so two days later we all came together to eat pizza, KFC, and sushi (excellent taste!). While eating and laughing, my dearest friend, Aien, asked me what my hopes, dreams, and motivations are for this new year of my life.
It was such an unexpected question, the kind that lingers in the air for a moment before it lands. I realised that in the chaos of travelling, of settling back home after two weeks away with my toddler, I hadn’t paused to reflect, give thanks, or dream about the year ahead.
Such joy filled my heart in that moment. To be seen, known, and loved enough for someone to ask. To be surrounded by the easy laughter of friends who’ve walked through the messy and the beautiful with me. There was joy in the food, the conversation, the warmth of togetherness, but also in something deeper: the invitation to dream again.
Somewhere in the busyness of life, I had stopped doing that. I had stopped taking my dreams to the Lord. Stopped sitting down with a pretty notebook, pen in hand, and writing down the longings that stir quietly beneath the surface. Maybe because life felt too full, or because dreaming felt like a luxury for a later season. But that night, something shifted.
The next day, after my son was asleep, I opened my notebook. I began to write, slowly at first, then freely. I wrote about the kind of mother, writer, teacher, and friend I want to be. About the ways I long to grow in faith and peace. And as I wrote, I sensed a familiar joy returning, the kind that comes not from getting everything right, but from being reminded that God still delights in our dreams. That He invites us to bring them, again and again, to Him.
Joy, I’ve learned, doesn’t always arrive in grand gestures. It often slips in quietly through the ordinary: a question from a friend, a moment of reflection, a page in a journal, a whispered prayer.
These days, joy has also been showing up in my daily life with my son. I’ve started doing something simple but deeply freeing. When he asks me to play, I go. Even if there are dishes in the sink or a kitchen counter that needs to be scrubbed clean. The chores can wait; these moments cannot.
There was a time I would have hurried to finish the “urgent” tasks, telling myself I would join him in a few minutes. But those few minutes often turned into an hour, and the chance would pass. Now, I’m learning that joy often hides in those interruptions, in building block towers, messy painting sessions, and in his tiny hands reaching for mine.
When I choose presence over productivity, joy has a way of finding me.
Of course, there are still things that take away my joy. The endless noise of comparison. The quiet feeling of not doing enough, not being enough. The pressure to measure my worth by how much I can accomplish in a day. The fatigue that comes from trying to hold everything together.
But I’m slowly learning that joy slips away when gratitude does.
This season, I’m trying to practice joy, not as an emotion that comes and goes, but as a way of seeing. To notice it in small things: the smell of my hot tulsi tea in the morning, the sound of laughter echoing down the hallway, the peace that comes from knowing I am deeply loved, even when life is messy.
This year, I want to live slower, more attentive. To stop hurrying past the good things because I’m afraid of the hard ones. To believe that joy isn’t the absence of struggle, but the quiet conviction that I am held by God, by the people He’s placed around me, by grace itself.
There is joy in gathering around a table. Joy in dreaming again. Joy in playing on the floor with a child who reminds me daily to delight in simple things.
Such joy indeed.
Photo by Preslie Hirsch on Unsplash
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