This time last year the Lord put a word on my heart for 2016: Harvest. It was a promise that the seeds of what had been sown over the last few years were about to come to life. I wasn’t sure which promises, but I was excited to see what the Lord had in store.
To help document this harvest year, I decided to start a memory jar…or in this case, a Joy Jar.
During my senior year of college my roommate and I did wrote down memories and prayers for each other on slips of paper and stuffed them into a mason jar. Some nights when the homework was done and we were just vegging, we would pull the jar down off the top shelf of her closet and sit together, writing a few more memories for the jar and folding them up before the other could see. The night before graduation we sat on our dorm room floor, boxes and bags piled up around us as we tearfully read the papers and celebrated all that the Lord had done. I still have the jar and the memories inside…
Walking into a Harvest year, it seemed a fitting way to document the blessings of 2016.
Picking up a glass storage jar at Wal-Mart, I went home and painted on the word JOY. Any promise the Lord fulfilled, anything I was waiting on the Lord for, any unexpected joy was written on bright green paper, folded up and added to the jar.
Along with celebrating the good and the hopeful moments, though, my Joy Jar became a physical way of surrendering the hard stuff and believing God was walking with me through it. Things like “Lord, thank you for a family to pray with me through the hard times,” and “Lord, thank you for leaving me out of that group so I could have that great conversation with my friend.”
Whenever something hard or painful occupied my brain and heart space, my eye would catch the glass jar and I would claim the hard thing as joy, write it down, and add it to the growing number of green papers.
Having to write something down and put it in the jar became a way of changing my perspective. No longer was it a hard thing…it was joy.
It’s also been a fun way to look back over the year (and a lot less time consuming than reading through twelve months of journal entries).
Yesterday I cracked open the jar and read the contents. It truly has been a harvest year. I finally finished my the manuscript I’ve been working on the last five years. I got to travel and take a couple road trips. I celebrated with one of my best friends as she got married. I saw my first Broadway show. I explored some new cities. I joined a Zumba class.
But more than the activities and events, I think the greatest harvest of 2016 was the people I did those things with. The people who were there for me in the rough spots. The people who celebrated with me and prayed over me. The people who pointed me back to Jesus and told me the hard truth. The people who held me through the pain. The people who shared new experiences and firsts.
Praise the Lord for the Harvest!
And now as I look at the dawn of 2017, He’s spoken a new word: Revive.
There is change ahead this year. There is restoration. There is revived hope and projects and relationships. There are revived dreams and desires. I don’t know it all–and for that I’m grateful. But you can be sure this Joy Jar is being revived too.
Here’s to another year of tracking joy, claiming joy, embracing joy in any and every situation.
Here’s to 2017!
Do you have any word you’re clinging to this year? Any reflections or celebrations from this past year? Comment below or send me a message! I’d love to hear from you!
Live in His Love!
Related: Choosing Joy in the Hard Seasons
