Searching for Happiness

People say that happiness is a way of life and not a destination, but for me it always has been. A destination, that is.

It’s never been a destination in the way that I’d think, “I want to find happiness someday,” or, “I want to go to happiness sometime.” Instead, my heart for traveling had found happiness in its most previous excursion.  

My family took a number of vacations when I was younger, so I've been traveling to different places for as long as I can remember. I never appreciated it much as a child, but my love for it grew as I did.

Each place spoke differently, but something about them spoke deeply to my heart. I learned that I love new places. I love experiencing different people and different cultures. I constantly reminisce about the places that I've been and I dream each day about the places where I plan to go next.

My destinations were my happiness; my happiness a destination.

Don’t get me wrong: traveling has certainly never been my entire life, but lately it’s been competing closely with other passions to become the most prominent.

Unfortunately for me this meant that when my dreams to travel seemed to fall apart, my happiness did so, too.

It all started when my dream to study abroad in Spain died. I had wanted for years to spend a summer in Europe learning of and experiencing the cultures and people in Spain. However, different plans came together, my life took unexpected turns, and my dream was put on the back-burner. At first I believed that I was only postponing the trip for the future, but I continually become less and less hopeful of that each day.

This experience of seemingly losing my dream created in me an irrational fear that none of my desires to travel would ever come to fruition. This then resulted in an incredible urge to “get up and go” before another opportunity passed by me. Nothing else seemed to matter as much, and every morning was only one more closer to the morning when I would leave. 

This dream quickly began to consume me. It became a dream fueled by fear instead of by passion, but I was far too engrossed by it all to notice.    

I started to pray about it numerous times each day because I was distraught about what to do and when to do it, but I wasn't really searching for answers. Being honest with myself (and with you), I wasn't looking for God’s guidance or his peace about the situation. I was only looking for a way to get what I wanted. 

My prayers didn't come from a scared child seeking comfort in the arms of her refuge. They didn't come from a confused daughter asking for peace enough to trust her Savior through it all. No, the prayers came from a selfish child asking God to do what she wanted so that she would be happy.

I had made happiness to be a destination, forgetting where it is truly found: in God.

I had allowed the things of this world to steal away my heart, and I was trying to find my happiness there. I believed that pursuing and accomplishing my dreams would satisfy my heart; but I couldn't have been more wrong.

God gives us dreams. He gives us our passions and desires. Dreaming and having goals isn't wrong. We find ourselves stumbling not when we dream, but when we make those dreams the sources of our joy.

I'm not saying don't dream. I'm saying don't let your dreams control your delight in life.

The moment we make someone or something other than God the direct source of our happiness, we will find ourselves let down, disappointed, and left wanting.

Nothing in my life deserves to be the foundation of my happiness, and none else can wholly captivate me like God. No relationship, destination, career, vacation, or success will ever bring me the joy found in Jesus. I do experience God’s love and joy through these things, but it should never be solely through them.

I firmly believe God wants me to enjoy life; he has given me a number of blessings to prove this to be true. However, I also firmly believe that he wants me to enjoy him, first and foremost. When I allow God to be the source of my joy, I have the freedom to experience happiness in other aspects of my life, without letting them define it.  

My happiness should be dependent on God, not on my circumstances. And when my circumstances don’t define my happiness, I find it a lot easier to enjoy all of them.

Psalm 37:4 – Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. 

A Letter to my Body

This entry is inspired by and dedicated to the current National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.  

Dear friend,

Oh how I don’t even deserve to call you that.

I have betrayed you. I have betrayed you in the worst possible way, and I am ashamed.

I can’t even imagine what you must think of me, but I wouldn't blame you for any of it. I have treated you terribly despite your constant loyalty to me. I know that I have a lot of ground to cover if I am ever to make this right again, and I understand that I can’t undo any of the horrible things that I did to you.

For that, I am so so sorry.

I've never treated you as a friend. I have never treated you as though you were worthy of love, attention, care, or admiration. Rather, I have believed and acted upon the lie that you are worthless and you are wrong; that you are a source of shame.

I have spoken to you so harshly; thrown at you demeaning daggers of lies. I've looked right at you and told you how disappointed and disgusted I was with you. There were times I couldn't even bring myself to look at you.

I was so shallow and hurtful. 

I let other people talk so cruelly about you. I let them tease you and call you terrible names. I sat silently by as they slandered you and told me how worthless and ugly you were. I never defended you, and instead I accepted all of the criticism as true.

I was so embarrassed by you. I hated the way you looked and I hid you away from the world hoping no one would notice your flaws.

I wrongly blamed you for much of my pain, believing that you were the source of my problems. I convinced myself that it was your fault I had been so hurt, and I never hesitated to tell you so.

I was so heartless and misguided.

I have always been unfaithful to you. Regardless of how much you ever did for me, I was never happy enough with you. I've always wanted something else, something more, something different. You've never been good enough for me, though you've always been far more than I deserved.

I even tried to make you something different, instead of taking joy in what you already were. I tried to destroy your uniqueness instead of celebrate it. I tried to change you, and I yelled at you in anger because you weren't different, continually asking you why you couldn't be more like “that.”

I have deprived you of so much, and I have selfishly acted in ways that have jeopardized your health and strength. I have taken away your most basic needs and used them as a reward if you performed well. (Oftentimes I wouldn't even give them to you if you had). I punished you for desiring what feeds you your next breath, and I tried to train you to no longer crave those things, hurling insults at you when you did.

I have unrealistically expected so much from you, even in times of sickness, malnourishment, or injury. In moments wherein I should have been taking care of you, I didn't love you enough to allow you rest. Instead I called you weak and worthless for hurting, and I wanted nothing to do with you.

I hated you. I hurt you. I belittled you.

It hurts my heart just to think of how lowly I treated you, and I am ashamed of my actions. I would never allow someone I love to be treated in such a way, and yet I saw no fault in doing it to you.

I have been horribly wretched to you.

My dear friend, you were never wrong; I was.

I can never make up for the years of hurt and damage between us, but I can assure you our future together will be different.

I want to celebrate you. I want to praise you for the number of amazing things you do daily. I don’t thank you enough for your loyalty, nor do I commend you enough for your strength. You are an amazing creation, and I am astounded by your brilliance.

I want to tell you that you are beautiful, so beautiful, and that I am in awe of you. You are perfect as is, and I want to take delight in every imperfection. I am forever sorry that I tried to take away from you your uniqueness, not recognizing that it is what makes you who you are.  

I want to love you, and I want to love you well. I want to treat you as the special, radiant being that you are. I want to take care of you and respect what you need. 

You are wonderful. You are magnificent. You are stunning.

I am going to prove to you that things will be different now, though before I was blind to my faults and your beauty. I will strive to renew our relationship as it should have been from the beginning, and I will not allow anything to come between us.

I love you, I do.

Thank you for always being my faithful friend. Now, I vow to be yours.

Love, Mary.