We can't control our emotions, but joy is found in what we do with them

​I have felt like a new person the last year. That has little to do with my circumstances. In many ways my circumstances are as challenging as ever.

But how I approach my circumstances? Well - that has changed significantly. I'm assured of that this week in giant ways.

I've had car struggles. I took my car in for what I'd been led to believe was going to be a routine repair. It hasn't been routine. It's actually been quite expensive - and the expense grows on. My car is still in the shop, the auto repair experts are still trying to figure out what's wrong with it, and a time or two in our communications I've sensed they don't feel the same angst about my circumstances that I do.

That last part has been particularly challenging, since I've been taking my car to the same place for a decade with nothing but positive and helpful experiences.

One night earlier this week, after a hard conversation with the team at the shop, I felt anger. As I drove off in a loaner car, which was the most rickety reminder ever that I was NOT driving off in my car, I started plotting ways to make their lives as miserable as they were making mine.

Oh, I can't wait to get home and blast them on social media.

I'm going to sue them for doing work on my car they weren't sure would solve the problem.

I'm going to stand out in front of their shop for weeks holding a protest sign that warns people against getting their car worked on here.

Anger knows no bounds when it comes to creative revenge....

Then, I felt something stop me in my tracks. That something was me. The new me. The new me who realizes so much of the emotion I was experiencing in that moment was connected to feelings I carry with me from past experiences, not car experiences.

Anger being a big one.

That's how emotions work, you know. Psychologists tell us emotions last about one or two minutes. So what I felt about that conversation regarding my car passes pretty quickly.

What I feel and think about it, though, well that can go on a long time. And if I let it, it can go in some really negative directions.

The new me knows that. The new me knows that in the aftermath of so many emotions in my life, my thinking and my feelings can unknowingly be fueled and directed by events in my past. My lashing out at car people can look and feel like lashing out at my past people.

Over time, lashing out just becomes an automated pattern of my brain. And whether holding it in or openly expressing it, lashing out just becomes who I am.

So there I was, in a space I've become much more familiar with this past year, a space of recognizing that I was letting events in my life dictate the level of joy I was feeling in my life.

Was I happy about my car troubles? No. I am still not.

But sometimes joy doesn't look like happy. Sometimes joy looks like not being overcome by an anger that no longer looks like the person you want to be.

Sometimes joy looks like NOT lashing out where you once would have.

Sometimes joy is owning the power that comes with not having full control over your emotions, but having absolute authority over what you think and feel in the aftermath of them.

That's not always easy. I had to pull that loaner car into a parking lot. Take some deep breaths. Quietly pray, not for a better circumstance, but for a healthier way of thinking and feeling about the circumstance I was in.

I didn't drive away happy, but I did drive away in peace.

There was joy in that. A joy, thankfully, the new me experiences more and more these days.