A happy place

happy place, originally uploaded by andebos.

Finding a happy place, ah yes...perhaps a wise idea if you're a starfish! As for me, I announced the answer to this ever present question. As for the joy and happiness bit - I didn't want to post a response but I found it happening, and a weak answer at that. I encourage you to read it, if you care, and that part is below. As for my answer - yes, I am happy. My life has been marked with a clear sense of good times, medium times, and hard times. Oddly enough, it's almost the hard times where I am most thankful. I am thankful for those times because that is when I felt most alive, the most growth, the furthest from me. At this point in my life, I would say it's an easy and good time. I am surrounded by life changing people, new experiences that test me each day, and in a great place of life that I feel is helping me become someone I want to become. As I look at if I'm happy, the very basic answer is, yes. There are many reasons I could say yes but I think it's mostly the bizzare changes I'm seeing in my heart day to day. I've been spending some good time reflecting over the history of my life, both personally in solitude and with a professional (which I know some of you did not know). This time is incredibly helpful for me....there are difficult and ugly times in my life - these experience produced some painful emotions for me...strangely, this is nothing to grieve over, for in this difficulty, light is sheding upon my life that I never knew was there. The funny thing about God is that instead of presenting new realities to us...typically, he removes the stain from our eyes to show us grace and realities that were always there. Now, my friends, as I am realizing the light that has ever presently shone over my life...my prayer for you - as you move through your life, is that you, too, can see what has been in front of you all along. Am I happy, in everything that has happened? I would say, my life is incredible, and whether the experiences have made me cry or laugh, as I look back, all I can do is smile. You can take that for joy, happiness, whatever word you want to take - know that I look back, here and now, and forward, and I smile! I imagine that my new smile will be there till the end of my days. I pray for you, a smile.

"Just to see you smile, I'd do anything, that you wanted me to, when all is said and done, I'd never count the cost, it's worth all that's lost, just to see you smile."


Several weeks ago I posed the simple question, "Are you happy?" I received many honest answers to this question and many responses to the appropriateness of the question itself. I claimed that if at least ten individuals responded to the question then I too would respond...well, here I am. As far as the whole joy versus happiness bit - I don't really feel like attacking that whole deal lest to say that it annoys me about as much as any other christian annoyances I hear. Knowing that was sure to come is half the reason I wrote the question. I suppose the reason it bugs me is the backwardness of thinking - many times we are led to believe, or at least we express this in our speaking ,which means that it's somewhere in our thinking, that we are to pursue joy. I imagine that in asking the question, "Are you happy?" you took it from the stance of pursuit rather than reflection. It truly annoys me because it hides our true selves from one another...I don't know how many times I've heard this phrase from someone I know is struggling...here's the convo: I'm sorry about what happened, are you okay? I'm hurting but I'm joyful!" or "I'm not happy but I'm joyful!" Right at the moment when you're about to actually engage your heart, struggle with the realities creating those emotions, you blast it with that christian joy cliche. My friends, I heard over and over that phrase "pursue joy"..."the fruits of the spirit are joy" - you don't pursue the fruit to make fruit, it naturally occurs out of a life that is rooted. I guess I too used to sit back and say the joy line. I think the best aspect of joy is that it rightly reflects the feelings in our life born from the circumstances in our life - the suffering, the good, the relationships...etc, these feelings aren't bad. We aren't robots made to ignore them, rather we are to cherish them as they make us human. In doing so we begin to understand ourself and come to a point where we begin to see the slow movings of God within our hearts. Yes, I embrace joy and want to feel it, but it's not something I pursue or try and create, rather I allow it to be grown into me through life. I also use it, along with other feelings, to reflect on my life. As for the question, are you happy? Well, I feel that question is, in essence, not asking you to pursue happiness, but simply that - look at your life, what are your feelings about it? These feelings will help you understand what's happening - and they're not always correct, sometimes they need challenging. Anyway, I have more thoughts but that's my bit on happiness, and thus, I will continue to ask the question, are you happy, in that I will continue to look at the fruit created in my life.