Happiness is a Choice

I've never heard of Rodney White, but I saw this poster while shopping on black Friday!

via

We tend to seek happiness when happiness is actually a choice.

Truth right?  I think we spend a lot of time thinking about our past and how happy we were back then that we forget we can be happy right now.  We romanticize the past and make it seem like this perfect time in our life, when in truth we are just choosing to remember the good stuff.  

I can look back and only remember the good things about seminary.  When the going gets tough now, I can easily think seminary was this wonderful time in my life and it was.  I just easily forget the knots in my stomach as we waited and waited to find out what happened next in our lives.  I can easily forget the pain of realizing that my current job there was not going to be my career.  I think that's okay to maybe forget those things, but it's not okay to keep comparing what I am living right now to a romanticized version of my pervious life.  

God calls us to move forward to keep going.  We can't be stuck in the past seeking something we will never find.  God was with me in the past.  I grew and learned new things and have carried those with me, but God isn't still in the past waiting for me.  God is in front of me and beside me and right behind me as I walk on this journey.  If I keep craning my neck to remember the good things behind me, I'm not making a choice to see the wonderful things God has placed right in front of me.  I'm missing that happiness.  We can't seek happiness from behind us.  

I remember thinking life was so much better on internship.  And it was great, but there are things on internship that happened, that I won't even talk about on my blog.  Tough things.  Added to those tough things was a job transfer where I was lied to and things did not go according to plan.  Happily, I look at internship as an amazing time of personal growth.  My faith grew to places I never knew.  When I think about my faith life, I miss internship and what I was learning there.  I can easily romanticize internship and remember the birth of my son and the wonderful people, but things weren't always happy.  

I'm not trying to say that we should remember the unhappy things in our lives.  I am just trying to put into perspective the life we live right now.  This is it!  God is calling us to something right now and we won't be completely happy until we are listening to the call of God and looking at our life right now and in the future.  We certainly can't forget the past, we just need to use it to move forward and not try to continue living in it.  It's taken me a few years, but less and less do I compare the "now" to the "past".  It feels good.  It's a good choice to choose happiness right now.  I'm never going to be able to find it if I keep looking.  God is showing me happiness right now!

Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit 

that has been given to us.  Romans 5:5

(My bible notes say that "God holds nothing back"!)