When I was around nine years old I started spending weekends at my older sister's house.
She is sixteen years older than me. To me she was always more like a second mom than a sister. And on those weekend nights we would pull out the Disney movies and watch every Hayley Mills film we could get our hands on. Summer Magic. The Parent Trap. And our favorite, Pollyanna.
If you have not seen it, Pollyanna is a little girl who plays something called the Glad Game. No matter what happens, no matter how hard the circumstance, she finds one thing to be glad about. Just one. And she holds onto it.
I loved that movie. I loved her.
Although time spent with my sister changed for a season, our bond reignited after my mom died in 2020. Now instead of weekends we have Sundays. Instead of Hayley Mills movies we watch Gilmore Girls. Same energy. New bonding experience. And honestly my sister and I relate so much to Lorelai and Rory. We are the same age difference. She really could have been my mom, and at times it truly feels like it. Sitting there each Sunday, having conversations over coffee with Gilmore Girls in the background, there is something special. Something peaceful and joyful and nostalgic all rolled into one.
I tell you that because I want you to know that joy is not a new idea for me. It is actually one of my oldest ones. I came from it. I was wired for it.
Which is why this past season has felt so strange.
For months I have been living like Eeyore under a dark cloud. Still showing up. Still social. Still moving. But slow. Lethargic. Gloomy in a way I could not shake. Like the sun was somewhere above me but I could not see it no matter which direction I turned.
And yes. By this point you can probably tell that Disney made a real impact on me. It still does. Even the name Keep Moving Forward came from a Walt Disney quote that appeared after the credits of Meet the Robinsons. It stopped me the first time I saw it. It became the first quote I wrote in my commonplace notebook that year. It became the name of this whole series. Some things find you exactly when you need them.
Especially when things hit you out of the blue and keep piling on. My brother's accident seemed to start the cycle this time. Followed by work stress that was completely outside my control. The quick illness and death of our beloved feline friend. Then something, only a couple of weeks ago, happened that sent my anxiety through the roof and took what little ground I had left right out from under me.
I kept going to therapy. I kept doing the work. But early on, somewhere in those first couple of weeks, I realized that therapy alone would not reach the place I needed it to reach. I needed God. I needed scripture. But not a study guide someone else wrote. Something just for me. Something I built from the inside out.
So I made them. Twelve worksheets and twelve devotionals in five months. Written from inside my own valley. I even had my therapist review them to make sure I was not digging deeper than I could safely handle on my own. She was proud of me. That meant something.
But even as I was healing, something was missing.
You cannot heal in the dark forever. At some point the healing has to include looking for the light.
And then just like that, God worked. He sent me a messenger in the guise of my client. The Holy Spirit spoke and I listened. I cannot remember exactly what we were talking about or what words she said, but something she said made me stop. And I could not believe that I had been trying to regulate my dysfunction for five months. Five months of stacking and carrying and pushing through. And I realized I was exhausted and so very tired of feeling blue. Tired of letting things I cannot control take up the space where my happiness used to live.
Then Pollyanna appeared in my mind. The part where she was looking at the prisms. Then the flash to her talking with everyone about the Glad Game. Then her becoming paralyzed. And her aunt, who was so stoic and cold, playing the game to show Pollyanna that she had made a difference. That she should not lose hope in her dark day. That whole memory lasted only a millisecond. And after it, I made a decision.
I am ready to play the Glad Game again.
I am not pretending the hard things did not happen. I am not skipping the grief or the real work of putting yourself back together. But I am refusing to let that be the only story I am telling myself.
So here is what I am glad about today. God gave me a talent. He gave me an imagination. And for the first time I am putting my faith in God and using that talent for Him and for joy. I am writing with the gift God gave me and I will not criticize that gift or take it for granted anymore. I will not talk negatively to myself about it. I have a team of people with me now. People who will help me when I am struggling with comprehension.
And out of that team, I have my beta readers. These five women recently read my debut novel, Winning Lady Beatrice, and every single one of them came back with helpful comments, thoughtful critiques, and so many kind words. I literally sat with their words, reading them over and over again, as each one brought me that feeling I had missed for months. Maybe even longer. Their words brought me joy. I needed them more than I realized. They made me believe in myself again for the first time in ages.
That was my first glad thing.
And then I wrote that sentence and realized it was not a small thing at all. That is huge.
And here is my second glad thing. I am grateful I wrote this blog post, because now I can see how special and significant this movement toward joy really is. I am glad I found it.
I am going to keep finding moments.
And that brings me to the next part of the Keep Moving Forward series. It is going to be about exactly this. Not toxic positivity. Not pretending. But the hard and holy work of finding something to be glad about even when everything in you is tired of looking. I do not have a timeline yet. I will write them as God inspires them. When they are ready they will be added at the end of the current twelve month series. If they come quickly the series may shift from one per month to one per week. But right now, as of this post, they go out monthly, one at a time, yours to print and keep.
If you are going through a tough time and you want to see how I walked my own journey, the worksheets and devotionals are there for you. Free. A monthly email you can print and put into a three ring binder. Built for the hard places.
This is a separate sign up from my fiction author email where you received your free copy of Vow of the Heart.
Sign up for the Keep Moving Forward series here: subscribepage.io/keepmovingforward
Pollyanna taught it to me at nine years old.
I think I can figure it out again at fifty-five.
Image credits: https://wordwool.com/pollyanna-by-eleanor-porter-quotes/