Searching for a way to understand my life recently, I sought to define myself.  I searched the internet and found numerous definitions for my name that are strangely accurate.

JOY  n.

1.  
   1. Intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness. The expression or manifestation of such feeling.
   2. Something or someone that provides a source of happiness.

          v.

1.  
   1. to take great pleasure, rejoice
   2. to fill with ecstatic happiness, pleasure or satisfaction
   3. to enjoy

JOY  Synonyms: 

1. delight, pleasure, triumph, satisfaction, ecstasy, enjoyment, bliss, transport, euphoria, festivity, felicity, glee, exuberance, rapture, elation, exhiliration, ebullience, exultation, gladness, joyfulness, ravishment
2. treasure, wonder, treat, prize, delight, pride, charm, thrill

I read these words and was surprised to find that I could see how they did define me, at least in part.  And I loved that it was defined both as an object and as an action.  I continued, though,  to delve further within myself and discover what I am on the way to finding who I am.

I am me.  I am unique.  I am different.  I am unusual.  I am glorious.  I am exciting.  I am special.  I am wonderful. I am ever changing.  I am constant.  I am boundless.  I am imaginative.  I am predictible in my unpredictability.  I am an enigma.  I am an open book that few can decipher.  I am intelligent.  I am musical.  I am talented.  I am beautiful.  I am unabashedly imperfect.  I make mistakes, lots of them,  though I strive not to repeat my mistakes.  I succeed, I fail.  I am up, I am down.  I smile and the happiness beams from my radiant visage to encompass and cheer those around me.  I cry and the clouds wrap me in isolation as the storms rage outside to bewilder those around me.  I am logical, yet highly illogical.  I am strong, yet vulnerable beyond belief.  I am certain, yet perpetually unsure.  I am bold, yet frighteningly insecure.  I am verbose, yet somehow speechless.  I am a social butterfly, yet I bloom in solitude.  I am pure spirituality.  I am raw, unfettered carnality.   I am a giver.  I am a gift to one brave enough to strip off the wrapping and coax me open.  I am a tease.  I am the greatest satisfaction, the most complete pleasure, imaginable.  I am a sensual being, a hyper-sexual creature who longs to experience everything possible, feels every sensation with a terrifying intensity.  Yet I am alone, trapped in a vaccuum devoid of all feeling, numb to all stimulation, waiting for someone to rescue me, to help me feel, care, love once again.  I am desired.  I am spurned.  I am wanted.  I am afraid.  I am loved.  I am hurt.  I am all these things and more.  I am undefinable.

Despite my efforts, the biggest, most obvious description I would give of myself was still missing. 

I am LOVE. 

I Live, therefore I Love.  I Love, therefore I Live.  I live to love, and I love for life.  Somehow I never seem to run out of love.  I have an endless, inexhaustible capactiy for it.  Once I love it never stops.  It may change, it may fade, but it never goes away.  Everyone I have loved in my life has stolen a piece of my heart that can never be returned.  And yet my heart, my spirit, possess such magical regenerative properties that there is never less love for the next person who comes along.  That may seem improbable, even intimidating, at least to those who come into my life, but the fact remains that once I love you I always will.  Eventually it will change to where I can say that I loved you for a certain reason, because of what you were to me at whatever point in my life I was at when I first loved you.  But there will forever remain a part of me that loves you. 

Why do I love the way I do?  Partially because it's an intrinsic element in who I am, and partially because of the way I was raised.  My parents taught me, both by word and by example, that we are to love everyone.  My mother taught me, more practically, that there are some we are incapable of loving on our own, but God would help us love them, or just love them for us if even that was too much for us to handle.  I wish I could say that I love everyone, but that doesn't quite fit.  I love, period.  Every molecule of my being is suffused with love.  Love for every creature, every sight, every person I encounter.  I have found that if I look, there is something to love in everything and everyone I see. 

I look, and I see the big picture.  That nothing I say or do is going to change my ultimate fate, my ultimate destination, for that was ordained 27 years ago, when as a young child I asked Christ to dwell in me, to abide in my heart.  I'm merely along for the ride.  This doesn't mean that I have no responsibility for my words or actions, far from it actually.  Rather, it means that what happens in the present is incidental along the way.  The past is to be learned from and not dwelt on, and the future is to be dreamed of, planned, and ultimately left to God's leading.  He wants us to be willing and able to hear His voice and follow what He asks of us.  Not that we shouldn't make plans.  We should.  But we are to be flexible and willing to change the plans we have made to follow His leading, no matter what He asks, despite not being able to understand why or see how it could possibly work.  Tennyson wrote,  "Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die".  I believe similarly that ours is not to question Him, ours is but to follow Him and live eternally.  We may never know why He leads us to do something, just as we may never know the impact we have on the lives of others.  A kind word, a smile, a hug or gesture of kindness could be the one thing that changes someone's life.  And it's not because of us.  It's Him! 

My mother taught me early on that we are the only bible some people may ever see or read.  That's a pretty serious thought there.  What do people think when they see you?  The greatest compliment I have ever received was a decade ago from a co-worker at the PetsMart in Sand City/Monterey, CA.  Sitting in the cash office counting a drawer one night, she asked me what it was about me, that there was just something different about me.  I didn't get caught up in the drama or talk bad about anyone.  I just seemed to be above it all without acting like I felt I was better than everyone else.  My explanation to her was that I knew that job, that place, was not my life.  That my life was so rich and full of promise and excitement, potential, that I didn't let anything get to me.  That was part of it, but I missed a great opportunity to witness that night. 

I made up for it at least partially a few weeks later when I was getting ready to move to San Angelo, TX.  I was leaving the store after picking up my final paycheck and saying goodbye when the same co-worker came running out after me with a present.  She seemed close to tears as she handed me the little teddy bear in a gift bag with a card and asked me how I could be so calm and happy about moving somewhere new, leaving everyone behind, all my friends.  I told her then that I had moved so many times in my life that I had learned to see each move, each new place, as an adventure, a challenge, a place with new things to discover, new people to meet.  She asked me if it was hard to leave people behind, friends, family, etc, not understanding how I could do that and be happy.  I explained that although I missed people, it rarely bothered me.  I knew that the people I cared about the most I would see again, whether it was here or in heaven.  The only ones I worried about when I left where those I wasn't sure about, didn't know if they believed, where they were headed.  Those I prayed for and trusted in God to care for and bring to Him.  All I could do was be me, show Him in my life and be an example. 

That sentiment has held true throughout my life.  From my first move as an infant from Ft. Worth, TX to the small town of Plum Bayou, AR when my father graduated from seminary, all the way through to my latest move from a huge house with my husband, best friend and four children to my first ever apartment completely on my own as my life changed irrevocably, my marriage ending after 13 1/2 years and my now ex-husband preparing to marry the best friend who stayed behind.  During this most recent stage of my life, spanning two years and including 3 moves, I still strove to be an example, to show His love and His mercy even as I struggled with my own hypocrisy.  The past two years were in some ways completely out of character for me.  I became a different person: dishonest, secretive, miserable.  And yet my underlying foundation never changed at all, because the defining theme of that period was love.  I loved more in the past two years than I ever thought I was capable of.  And I hurt more than I believed possible.  I'm still recovering, and I fear that it will never be completely over.

Love is pain.  To love is to risk being hurt.  To be in love is to throw all caution to the wind, knowing you will be hurt and choosing to ignore all warning signs.  To want to be with someone so badly that you embrace the inevitable anguish.  To want your life intertwined so deeply with another's that you cannot disentange the woven threads without unravelling them, causing such destruction that neither can be whole again on its own.  Perhaps there are people who can love without that kind of complete and utter surrender, but I cannot.  I exist to love.  I am Love.  I am Passion.  When I love it is completely.  I give myself entirely: heart, mind, body, soul.  Nothing else exists, nothing else matters but the one whose love I seek.  When I am in love, what I think or want is trivial, of no import next to the wants, needs or desires of the object of my infatuation.  For truly, infatuation is closer to what I feel, obsession even. 

The difficulty with this is that I am perpetually in love.  From a very early age I was constantly in love with someone.  It wasn't until high school was nearing its end that I realized the truth.  I was, and continue to be, in love with the idea of being in love.  In love with an imagined, perfect, idealized love.  When I fall in love with someone, they fill that place for me.  They become perfect in my eyes.  I ignore the flaws and cherish the little imperfections that make them human, for that is truly where love lies.  To see the truth of who a person is and love them for it.  Because ultimately, love is truth.  Love is honesty.  Love is not blind.  It sees everything there is to see about a person, but embraces the big picture, choosing to focus on finding the beauty that endures in the desolation of a soul that cannot be perfect. 

This is who I am.  This is what I am.  A confusing mess.  A conundrum, if you will.  A wife without a husband. A mother without a child.  A lover without a mate.  A woman of error, bad timing, and irretrievable damage.  Alone.  But through it all, despite it all, I Love.  For I know His promise.  That though the weeping may last through the night, Joy comes in the morning.