What Happens When You’re Already Happy

I’ve had a very strange thing happen lately. I go to say my prayers and after asking once more for our house to sell and giving my thanks for family, health, our marriage and the dogs I come to the part where my real requests start pouring forth.

For a long time this has been the more lengthy part of my conversations with the man upstairs. Please help me lose a few pounds, please let Husband get a job, please let me find a new job, please take away such and such’s cancer, please keep such and such cancer free, please help me to have the discipline I need to reach my fitness goals, please help me to find the happiness in the life I’ve been given…

We always have so many requests don’t we?

I realized before we moved that so many of my endless requests were in the process of being answered, but I’m not sure that I realized to what extent. Now arriving at my determined time to bombard God with all the many things I think I need, I’m finding myself without words.

I no longer need to pray for happiness because I have found it in the place, in my relationship with Husband, in my friends and family and in the stillness of myself when I am completely alone.

I no longer need to pray for discipline for my fitness goals or to lose weight because I’ve actively fallen back in love with exercise and although I’m a little pudgier than I would like to be I’m ok with it because it’s a result of the beautiful culinary and loving experiences I’ve had since we’ve moved here.

I’ve received news that good friends have survived the deep recesses of cancer and are now living a new life cancer free. I’ve received news that friends and family living with cancer are still maintaining a level of stunted growth.

Husband has a job and so do I.

So as you can see the many things I’ve prayed so consistently for are now taken care of.  So what happens now?

I feel as though some of the clutter of my thoughts has in a way been cleared out allowing me to get down to the real aspects of life that need to addressed. Things like what can I do in the world to help make it better or putting forth some effort into figuring out my purpose here.

I’m sure we all know what dissatisfaction tastes like. We know how it eats at our souls and generates feelings of jealousy and anger that many times we can’t really understand because we haven’t gotten to the route of our dissatisfaction.

I had hoped to be able to spend this time here exploring all the things that spark happiness and inspiration within me. I hadn’t expected to have a job, not that I’m not infinitely grateful that I do,  but I still have the hope for that soul “research”.  I found myself retreating to my old rut of working till gym time, gym time till dinner, couch time till bed as if I’ve forgotten the feeling of living that we’ve discovered here. I realize I can’t go at life with a relentless vigor every single day. It would be exhausting. But I also can’t let every day slip away on the hopes that I will make something of the next day. Everything must be a balance. Life has to be a balance of little moments that bring your life into focus and times when you space out and just let life happen. In a desperate way I feel as though I HAVE to find this balance before me move. Granted I know nothing about South Dakota but the thoughts of mountainous snow and the stark emptiness of being surrounded by nothing but nature screams an opportunity for depression if I don’t figure out how to find the inspiration in my normal everyday life, free of convenient events or constant family and friend interaction.

I’ve lived an uninspired life before and I don’t want to go back. So now my seemingly only request (other than the house selling, sell house sell!) is to find my inspired balance. Figure out what makes my little heart tick and pursue it with a gusto.

Tell me friends what makes the thump thump thump of your heart beat?