I'm happy, but I'm not supposed to be.

Apparently, I am not supposed to be happy.  This is not necessarily news to me, but this statement has been marinating in my mind for a month or so.  Let me explain how this statement came to be about and (if you haven’t already guessed) why it is ludicrous.

Awhile ago, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with an old friend over dinner.  We have been friends for over twenty years, but had not sat down to talk for about eight years or so.  During this lapse of time, both my friend and I experienced the “curveballs” that life can so cruelly throw our way, and we spent some time catching each other up and reflecting on our lives, the lessons we learned, etc.

At one point during the evening, my friend looked at me and said “You sound really happy.” To which I replied, “You know, I really am.” And honestly, I am.  If you look at my circumstances, or at the “curveballs” I’ve been given, you may think otherwise.  In the eight year interim since my friend and I spoke I:

 ·         Left my husband of thirteen years and became a single mom of four

·         Due to the marriage I was in, I was also swimming in debt that I am still crawling out of.  Because of this…

·         I moved back home with my mother

 Romantic comedies are made about circumstances like this. I am specifically thinking of Hope Floats starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr. But I don’t look like Sandra Bullock and I don’t have a hunky Harry Connick Jr. wooing me, but I digress.

If you had asked me twenty years ago what I wanted my future to look like, I would not have joyously listed the above circumstances.  But what happened to me has shaped my character, and made me a better person.  I have been through the fire and I have come out of it whole and stronger.  That is what makes me happy.

However, during the same dinner with my dear friend, she shared another nugget of wisdom.  After she caught me up on her life, she made the following statement (and I paraphrase here) – According to society, we should not be happy because we “failed” in succeeding at life.

Don’t be so quick to judge that statement.  Many people I know – and unfortunately some people I go to church with – look at my current situation and sympathize with how bad I have it.  And to many of those people, I have failed at life.  I should be a happily married woman (whoops! Failed that one.) in my own home (strike two) with enough money to buy whatever my heart desires (and there is the death swing!).  I have had some well meaning people come right out and tell me how bad my circumstances are. Really.  In fact, when the issue of marrying again came up, an older woman chuckled at me and said “Well you waited too long to get married again.” Um, isn’t 39 the new 29?

 Before that last paragraph takes me completely off topic, let me finish my friend’s infinite nugget of wisdom.  She finished by saying that the happiness we have found in our new lives may not match what the world thinks happiness should be, but that does not diminish what we truly have.  And she’s right.  I’m very happy right now.  If marriage happens to come again, great; but I am not obsessed with finding husband number 2 to validate the insecurities born from husband number 1. And while I am still recovering from the financial disaster that my first marriage was, I am on better financial footing than I was five years ago.  As for living at home, that is a non-issue.  I have found my happy.  My friend has found her  happy too. Our happy does not look like the conventional happy, but why should it?  God made each of us, and designed us to be gloriously different.  So if we are destined to be unique, why should we conform to a cookie cutter standard of happy?  It’s something to think about.  It’s something I think about now when I go up to a stranger at church and introduce myself.  I don’t want to diminish their happy because I think differently.