Doing What Makes You Happy

Doing what you believe will make you happy is a really bad idea.  You are not able to see into the future.  You do not know if you are making the right career choice, the right choice of a significant other, the right decision regarding a place to live or anything else really.  You have no idea what forces will be set in motion by your decisions.

I hear people say they must do a certain thing because it will make them happy.  How on earth can they know this?  I have been around to witness some of the outcomes of decisions made in this way, and some have brought terrible grief and long-lasting trouble.

I have watched people decide that a certain thing would be to their benefit, and then try to manipulate events to bring about the desired outcome.  They push and pull and struggle and make bad choices, in order to bring about some result, and then find it an empty and sickening victory.

I am not advocating that you, therefore, live a passive life avoiding decisions.  What I am advocating is that you start seeking advice from someone who knows the future.  I am not talking about a crystal-ball gazer or palm reader.

Isaiah 42:8-9 says, I am the Lord, that is my name!  I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.  See, the former things have taken place and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.

God is claiming that he is all-knowing.  He sees the future and if he chooses, he can announce it ahead of time.  He does not always, in fact, rarely reveals the future to us.  But he also says, Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21)

His guidance is available when we humbly stand before him and ask for his help.  This results in much better choices than trying to bring about our own happiness.  We need to trust God and believe in His love for us, so that we are willing to place our lives in His capable hands.  God wants us to experience not just happiness, but genuine joy!

Christ said, If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  John 15:10,11

Listening to God’s voice and making decisions in that context does not bring soul-crushing restrictions.  He is NOT out to destroy your happiness.  His desire is to fill you with a happiness you can’t begin to understand until you experience it.

I know you don’t believe it.  I know you don’t want to leave your chosen path.  But…it won’t make you happy.  I see misery ahead.

And if you think I wrote this for you, I did!

The Inevitable

The inevitable approaches.

It swirls around

Like a fabric

Blowing in the wind.

The gray mist deepens

To inky black

And thickens until

I cannot inhale.

The shroud covers me.

I can not

Disentangle myself

Nor those I love.

But just as I despair,

Someone intervenes

And rips away

The suffocating cloak.

My Savior

Dries my tears

With the sleeve

Of His own garment.

He wads up the rag of death,

Tosses it away.

I see only

The radiance of His face.

On this mountain, he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations, he will swallow up death forever.  The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces...Isaiah 25:7,8

The Lesson of Hardship

I was thinking today about the attitude of entitlement that so many young people have, and how different that is from the attitude of the generation before me.  People who lived through the Depression had a totally different mindset.  As they die out, our society as a whole becomes more self-centered and more demanding of parents and government.

My Uncle Roy was born in 1920 and died almost 6 years ago at the age of 91.  In his later years, he talked about some of the defining times of his life.  One of these was during the Depression, so he was probably about 10 years old.

Uncle Roy had a paper route which was all well and good during the spring, summer and fall, but as winter set in with bitter cold, the daily route become arduous.  He was really still a child, and he decided the situation was unbearable.  One night at the supper table, he announced that he planned to quit his paper route.

His father (my grandfather) replied, “You can’t quit your paper route.”

“Oh, Pa, it is so cold.  Why can’t I quit?”

“Do you see that loaf of bread sitting here on the table?  The money you earn puts that loaf of bread there.  You can’t quit.”

Even though he was a child, he understood that he was helping to feed his family, and they were depending on him.

My father never talked specifically about the Depression years, but he was 5 years older than Uncle Roy, and I know he worked in a grocery story as a teenager.  By the time he was in his late teens, he was training as a butcher.  That did not end up as his career, but he was great at carving the meat at family dinners, and I suspect that skill was not the only lesson learned during the 1930s.

About 20 years before the Depression, my maternal grandmother also experienced the need to help support her family.  Her father was murdered and she had to drop out of school and help support the family by working as a seamstress in a clothing factory.  She had only finished 8^th grade.  I don’t know whether the factory was a “sweat shop,” but I do know she was accepting responsibility far beyond her years. 

Today’s youth are whining if they don’t have their own TV with cable and smart phone with wifi access.  It is not unusual for a teen to drop out of school and sit at home playing video games.  Some finish high school and then don’t go to college or get a job. I was visiting with friends one day, when the father sarcastically remarked that his son didn’t have to work, because he was “independently wealthy.”  What he meant was that his son expected his parents to support him.

I hate to see our society crash because of a depression or other disastrous event, but if young people never experience hardship, our society may crash anyway.  I don’t see how we can continue to survive with so much expected of parents and of the government.  Someone has to pay for this.

Someone has to put the loaf of bread on the table.

Dee Cipher Goes to a Birthday Party

I'm working on trying to make this so it can be printed out!

In the Hotel

A wide variety of people end up in close proximity in hotels.  If your stay is a brief overnight, you may not be particularly aware of other guests, but when staying for an extended period of time, the odds of encounters seem to increase.

We are in an extended stay hotel for a week while Bill participates in the National Senior Games.  Over the last few days, I have repeatedly heard a child crying out, “yee, yee, yee.”  The cry does not seem to be one of pain, but there is distress in the sound.  I am guessing that a family in a room near us must have a child who is either brain damaged or slow developmentally.  Bill hasn’t noticed this at all, but being a mother and a nurse my ear is differently tuned.  I am thinking about the difficulty of traveling with a child who presents challenges, and the difficulty of staying in a hotel room…even one that has a kitchenette and is spacious.  It would still be confining with a child who is needy.

Yesterday Bill had a lengthy conference call in the room and since the business was none of my business, I decided to give him privacy.  When I received a phone call, I left the room and went outside to talk.  As I returned to the hotel and passed through the lounge area, I saw a man sprawled in a chair, legs extended, arms dangling off the sides of the chair, head lolling to one side…totally out.  His color was good and he was breathing so I assumed he was just exhausted and sleeping.  The amusing thing was that he had a dollar bill and a piece of candy perched on his abdomen.  I chuckled to myself about whether those items could be lifted without him waking up.  I didn’t try.

Earlier, I had been sitting in that same chair crocheting.  The lounge area is a sort of balcony just a few steps above the entry and office area.  A couple had come in while I was sitting there.  The man was jangling a handful of metals.  He was old enough to be in the Senior Games so I commented that he must have had a good day of competition.  Turns out he speaks very broken English, and it took several exchanges between us before I figured out that he was a cyclist.  A few minutes later his wife, who also speaks English with difficulty, showed up at the office.  No one was in the office and she became very angry about this.  She needed to do some laundry….from what I could gather it was probably her husband’s sweaty clothing.  She needed change for the machines in the laundry room and expected to get it at the office, but no one was there.

She came up the few stairs to where I was sitting and expressed her anger to me.  I said, “I know that a few days ago….”

She snapped, “I don’t care about a few days ago.”  She managed to get that out very clearly despite her broken English.

I said somewhat sternly, “I am trying to explain to you that a few days ago, when they were short staffed, the person in the office was also doing some of the cleaning, so I suggest you look in the hallways for a cleaning person.”

She muttered something I couldn’t understand, so I then said, “Exactly what do you need?  Maybe I can help you.”

She held out some singles and said she needed quarters.

I told her to wait there and I would go to my room and get some quarters….I knew the change purse on my wallet was about to rupture.  On my way back down to the lobby, I passed a staff person in the hall and mentioned to him that no one was in the office and a guest was looking for someone.

I was able to give the angry lady 7 quarters plus the change to make two dollars and then she was happier.  Also, before she stomped off, someone showed up at the office and she got a bunch of additional quarters, so she was smiling again and said ‘thank you’ to me as she passed.

Yup…the world is full of interesting people.  Since Bill isn’t running today, I think we may go to the zoo.  Probably won’t be much different than the hotel.

African Violet

I have some lovely houseplants, but they must learn to survive on benign neglect.  I bear them no ill-will.  I like them, but I am not devoted.  I water them once a week, fertilize when it occurs to me…which is rarely, and repot them even more rarely.  Most of them put up with this low-commitment relationship, but then…there is the African violet.

I have written about African violets before. The house I lived in when I received a basket of five different African violets as a gift was apparently suited to their needs.   I previously described my delight when they actually bloomed a second time.  I had the basket on a table near a north facing window, and they bloomed repeatedly.  When we moved nearly seven years ago, I realized the only north facing window was a tiny one in a bathroom.  I moved the basket of violets around to various locations to no avail.  I finally took the aggressive step of repotting, but still no blossoms appeared.  I ended up giving all but one away.  I would have given that one away too, but no one wanted it. 

Since it was refusing to bloom, I had no idea what color I was keeping.  I placed it in a west facing window positioning it so that the sunlight would not hit it directly.  It continued to receive its weekly drink, but nothing else.  To my surprise it eventually bloomed and does so once or twice a year.  I am always delighted when I see the blooms beginning to unfurl.

I had an aunt who had beautiful African violets.  She said she talked to them and “patted their little leaves.”  She was a bit of a fruit loop in other ways, and I wasn’t anxious to follow her example.  I may, however, eventually tell this plant just how lovely I think it is.  Perhaps, I will even give it a bit of a pat and confess my love.

A Pile of Dust

I know people who go whistling through life without giving one thought to their motivations, never engaging in introspection.  It seems as if, their heads are full of white noise.   I know other people who agonize over what they do, what they think, and why.  Sometimes I would like to shake the oblivious types.  I wish I could untangle the knots into which the overthinkers tie themselves.  That includes myself, as I have a tendency toward the latter extreme.

This was the topic of discussion recently with a friend.  I have previously discussed this topic with myself.  I think this need for introspection is at least in part related to wanting to be sure one is doing the “right” thing, and the fact that we don’t always get feedback on that issue.  It would be nice if we got quarterly reports on how we are doing, but that isn’t the way life works.  It would be nice if we could know with certainty, but that isn’t how life works either.  And…maybe it wouldn’t actually be so “nice.”

One thing of which I want to assure overthinkers, and which has been a comfort to me personally, is that “He remembers that we are dust.”

He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.  As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.  Psalm 103:10-14

God is not sitting up in heaven waiting for us to mess up so He can zap us.  We are certainly going to say, do, or think the wrong thing at some point…pretty much daily.  Other human beings may sit in judgment looking for something to criticize, but God does not do that.  He wants us to recognize our own frailty and look to him for redemption.  He knows exactly what we are made of….and it is dust!  We are inherently flawed.  No matter how hard we try to do good, we will not achieve it all the time.  But if our desire is to honor and serve God, if we love Him and accept the forgiveness He offers, we can forgive ourselves too.  Then we won’t need constant affirmation from other human beings, and we can let their judgments roll off.  We don’t have to accept the hurt caused by others (well-meaning or not).

When a loving father is teaching his child a new skill, he does not expect perfection.  He expects an honest effort and improvement over time.  He expects the child will come to him with questions.  He knows the child is inexperienced and does not want to crush his spirit by being overly critical or demanding.  It is true that some human parents are demanding and hurtful, but our Heavenly Father is not.

He is like this father:

“Oh, look…my 6 month old can’t walk yet, but he is rocking on all fours trying to crawl.

Wow…he is 9 months old and pulling himself to a stand.

He is tottering and looks like a drunken sailor, but he is only a year old and hasn’t perfected his walking.

Now that he is two, he can skip and jump.

I am so proud of my boy.  He just came in first at the cross-country meet.

Have I mentioned, my son just ran his first marathon.”

At each point in development, the parent has something to be proud of and can encourage the child to the next level.  No one expects a 6 month-old to run a marathon.

God watches our development lovingly.  He picks us up when we fall.  He is keenly aware of our flaws and frailties, but He loves us.  He forgives us and urges us on.

Ah Sovereign Lord, I accept the fact that I am dust and thank you for remembering.