Helping Him with our Happiness.

This begins the second week of Advent. We are so anxious and excited for the coming of the Christ Child. I have been thinking about my attitude a lot lately. About how my attitude makes or breaks my experience, how I see others, how I see the world. I have been guilty, oftentimes, of waiting for feelings of charity, patience, and compassion to just wash over me like rain or influenza. It doesn't work like that. I am really aware of that, lately. Happiness is not about luck. All those wonderful feelings must be cultivated, tended to, sewn.

This is taken from a great book I am reading right now; 'People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.'

So good. So appropriate for what our Advent topic and activity was tonight.

"If a child asks his parents for a fish, will they give him a snake? Of course not! If people, who are not perfect, know how to give good gifts to their children, won't God, who is perfect, do a much better job of giving good gifts to His children when they ask Him?" Matthew 17:10

We need to ask for happiness by asking God what HE wants for us. Only then will we really find happiness. He is the PERFECT gift giver, giving us things we may not understand, want, or feel like we need. He knows. He loves us with a perfect love. His desire for our happiness is infinitely greater than we can even fathom.

I was born with dark hair, dark eyes, deep and easy laughter, drool filled slumber, long fingers, child bearing hips, and a stubborn stong will for a reason. God knew what he was doing. He always does. Now? Now these child bearing hips hold babies all day long, these long fingers fit perfecly intertwined with my husband's on quiet drives home, and this strong will keeps me from quitting when everything in my body wants to. God gave me gifts that I didn't ask for, that sometimes I don't even want. But always, always I can know that He has a plan for my happiness, for all of ours, that is greater than we can know.

We just can't ever stop doing the work, taking Him for granted.