Friday, August 25, 2017

Happy Endings

I just finished a great book. It was one of those books that made me want to be better, to do more. I loved it so much that I incorporated it in to my devotional time, because it felt spiritual and deep and freeing. It made me laugh and cry and made me feel good. I am a feel good kinda girl. On date nights there is always a debate between suspense and shoot 'em ups and a romantic comedy. I really only like movies with happy endings. On my kindle, you will find a bunch of christian fiction romance novels. The kind where the girl and the boy meet and fall in love and live a predictable happily ever after life. I love things that are easy and good and happy. I struggle against the heavy and hard and harsh.

Real life is annoying to me because it is nothing like a hallmark movie. Sometimes, the endings aren't happy. Sometimes you can't predict it. In a couple of days, my 30-something year old husband will go and have an IV infusion. He knows that he needs it. He has had it before. He knows that it will last a few hours and then he will make an appointment for his next one in a about 8 weeks and still he hates it every single time. This week, he is staring real life in the face and scowling at it. The struggle is real. How can a dad of 3 little boys, a coach, a friend, a guitar player, justify that every couple of months, he has to go and have a needle stuck in his arm, give up several tubes of his own hard earned blood and sit for several hours while nurses take his vitals and medication wipes out his immune system so that it can't attack his own body? He goes to the appointment with normal coloring and clear eyes and he comes home exhausted, pasty, and sick. All in the name of survival. Is there really any good in that? It feels like mostly ugly. It proves that the world and life aren't always joy and light and easy.

I could give so many examples of this, of hearts that get bullied and broken, of struggles with things that we take for granted like reading a book or writing our name, of health that is stolen unfairly, of broken relationships, of women, mothers, who have fought and cried and worked tirelessly just to get to love and hold their own babies. I have cried with friends. I have cried alone. I have refused to cry anymore over some things. Life isn't always fair and fun and easy. It's why I read my happy romance novels and watch my cheesy movies.

My most recent read though, and my husband's looming appointment, and life in general all remind me of the Truth and that leads me to living everyday in joy or some measure of worshipful gladness. Psalm 30 says that "joy comes in the morning" and Lamentations says that "his mercies are new every morning". Real life is that my husband is sick but with modern medicine, he can play outside with his kids. He can work and provide for his family. He can stand on stage and worship his Savior with music. He can live life fully! There are blessings, even on infusion days. The truth is that life is not always sunshine and rainbows but, like my kids' favorite song to belt out in the car right now, "there ain't nothing gonna steal my joy!" I am choosing, and I really think we all should, to live life grateful and happy and overflowing. I am thankful, so very thankful, for the easy, like pretty sunrises and hugs from my boys, and I am also thankful for the hard, like meds that destroy to heal and the unpredictable struggles of life. I am thankful for joy-new, fresh, and always the choice that I want to make in my life. I want the joy down in my heart to be the definition of my each and every day.

The writer of the book Cold Tangerines put it like this, "It's rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to choose to dance, to choose to love your life. It's much easier and much more common to be miserable. But I choose to do what I can do to create hope, to celebrate life, and the act of celebrating connects me back to that life I love. We could just live our normal, day to day, lives, saving all the good living up for someday, but I think today, just plain today, is worth it. " May everyday from infusion days to birthdays to Thursdays, be lived in joy. Add it all up and it equals an entire life of love and light and joy. Heck, it might even be fit for a Hallmark movie!




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