Life Happens...

Yeah, I know what you're thinking it isn't 'life' happening, it's (insert ugly swear word here) happens.
But I've decided that the uglier phrase really is the similar meaning with the wrong perspective.

I had a good conversation with a friend this morning around this very subject, and then just hours later with our sweet secretary. It's not anything new to my own new way of thinking but is, in fact, one of those 'run back into that wall for the hundredth time' sort of lessons so I feel strongly urged to pass it along to others.
So here it goes.

All too often do we fall prey to ourselves and the thought process that when everything in life is going good, WE are good... we are happy cause 'things' are good. We fall prey to the very concept that our CIRCUMSTANCES are what bring us joy and that, somehow we are even DESERVING of said happiness. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that God doesn't want us to be happy or have joy...
what I'm saying is that our very earthly definition of it is extraordinarily shallow and self-deceived, comparatively.

I've posted before about pride and how it truly is our biggest enemy (cause it is, whether you choose to let some of your own down and admit it or not)... but it's not just the selfish pride I feel increasingly concerned for us all about......... it's pride that drives us so far, so DEEPLY INTO OURSELVES that the result becomes this idea--attitude, if you will--that we DESERVE happiness--and have allowed our life-circumstances--health, wealth, popularity, a 'dream home', that nice car, children, spouses *whatever you choose to insert into your definition*--to define our joy.

When we are little, our parents *at least mine* tell us that happiness is not in things. Yeah, yeah, we know. It's like any of those sayings that float around out there--they are golden truths, but the repetition of them has driven them to become stale. Or maybe it just goes back to our bigger problem...we just don't care to choose to heed them because well, it means that things... life... just isn't about ME.

In three days from now, I will be hooked to a machine to have hardcore 'mean' medicines pumped into my jugular where my heart will pump it out to my entire body---if I didn't say I wasn't just a little bit freaked out at the whole idea, I'd be flat out lying, but it is what it is and it's just all part of my journey.
Leading up to the chemo wait--whether stress-induced or other--I caught a bad cold. Sleeping solidly has been difficult, as most colds do to our sleep-schedules and the days have been a bit drearier. My 'placement' of joy has definitely been tested a bit. This morning, to my unexpected surprise, my youngest woke up with rash-like bumps all over his body. Chicken pox, anyone?!! Needless to say, another redundant saying, 'When it rains, it pours.' ;-P

So where is my joy. Well, it's been re-tested...
again...

BUT. It's still where it needs to be. It HAS to be.
In fact, after I saw the bumps, I started laughing *than admittedly turned to tears for a minute* but mostly just laughed at how funny life is. How far down to my knees I REALLY need to be--and more importantly STAY--to have my joy inhabit the correct area of my life.

The fact of the matter in all of it is that the absolute ONLY THING I, myself, am deserving of is death.
I deserve nothing. All this self-help, confidence-building jargon is just one more mis-leading idea. What I have...what I AM is only by God's Grace, ALONE.

By God's Grace I am ALIVE ENOUGH to have cancer that is threatening a LIFE I HAVE BY GOD'S GRACE.

Get it?! You are Living because God sacrificed His Son so you could have life... and so that you WILL  have Life and this death. In none of your circumstances--whether they be wonderful or miserable does true joy really live. It is ALL reflective of death. ALL OF IT.

So please... today... challenge that thought. Every time you go to complain about something that isn't 'going your way' or didn't 'work out the way you thought' or *my favorite* wasn't 'given to you the way you deserve'... just remember. YOU DESERVE NOTHING. And the very breath you took to complain about it was a GIFT you received by God's Grace, alone.

I want to make a NEW bumper sticker and it will say: 'Life Happens...PRAISE THE LORD!'