Take joy

I hope you will join me in celebration as I share this image on the one-year anniversary of the day I began seriously addressing my health issues. One year ago today, exhausted and in pain, I sat crying in my nurse practitioner’s office and said, “I want my life back.” Today, two spine surgeries later, I am happy to say that I am well on my way. Thanks to all whose good wishes and good deeds have helped in my recovery. 

May we take joy from the world we live in and share our gifts to build a more compassionate one.

Here is the text which Take joy! is taken from. It is most commonly attributed to a sixteenth century monk named Fra Giovanni Giaconda in a letter to his friend, the Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi, on Christmas Eve, 1513. It was in fact written by Ernest Temple Hargrove in the earlier part of the twentieth century. 

There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, that while I cannot give, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy!