"I guess that I have come to have a different idea about a 'happy life' than the one I used to maintain," I replied.
The fact is I do have a happy life. I am reasonably healthy. The woman I have loved for over forty years is still in my life and still loves me. Our children are healthy and happy. We have a grand-child who is the embodiment of Christmas morning, with all the presents under the tree. I have deep and lasting friendships with fine men and women. I work with my head and my hands, making paintings and sermons, forging iron and carving wood. I am surrounded by hundreds of books. I make music and poems. And, I know God and am known by Him.
All of that is happy and makes for a happy life.
But, my life has been marked from its beginning by deep tragedy and profound sorrow. I have known many afflictions that have diminished me, broken me, and humbled me. (The same things have enriched me, rebuilt me, and calmed me.) I have a deeply melancholic temperament that hides beneath a jolly, loud, and laughing personality.
In all this, I have come to think, as the author of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes says, that happiness is not something we make or possess. It is something that comes. It comes in short seasons, in small spurts, and sometimes, these last for a few days or so. Then, the cares, the labors, the fears, and the weariness, the "vanity" of it all return- and we plod on. The happiness is the gift of God, the surprise of human existence, the thing that makes the rest bearable and endurable. We take it as it comes and give thanks.
I spent a happy day of ten hours or so with "She." I thank her for her wish, wish the same for her, and am grateful that her remark got me thinking, and, I hope, thinking more deeply and clearly about the "happy life."
Blessings to you, dear Friend. May those moments or few days of happiness continue in your life as special blessing from Him Whom we trust with all.
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