Monday, July 23, 2018

Happiness?

We go on living, while we are dead inside.  Sudden sounds, memories, picture spark memories of that smile, hands that will never be linked together anymore, and the words of goodbye you were never able to say. You will never be able to say. With each passing day, you pretend everything is okay and convince yourself it is. You smile and hide the wrenching pain in your heart as you force yourself to move forward. Even when the people you love and cherish disappear from your side forever.

I wonder if that's what most people do and if living with this pain and persevering can truly make someone happy. In that case, you never really can forget the pain and move on. You carry the pain with you but never really be able to let it go. It's temporary, it's fake. After all, how can you truly experience happiness when the inside of you is dying?

I can see why it's so hard for people to find it when, in the darkest moments, it seems like it does not exist. Everything passes. And so, this is the encouragement we hold onto, fleeting hope that one day we may be happy. But even this hope that happiness waits for us can be dead, false, an illusion.

A thought then occurred to me. Is that...happiness? It seems like happiness is not as we think it is, and perhaps we are able to find happiness in this world...and for a single millisecond in the span of eternity, maybe that emotion makes us smile. Our hearts long, though, long for far more. We long for hope, hope that's everlasting, happiness that's everlasting. Maybe you can carry the pain with you in life, and true JOY awaits while all the temporary things of earth have passed. Maybe there's everlasting happiness. Maybe that's why we call it joy, because there is actually something to rejoice over. We can have joy and hope we can hold onto when we receive it from God. When we remember God's grace displayed for us, when we respond in thankfulness, and when we remember God gave us a purpose.

When we live with purpose, we are alive, no longer dead and wandering senselessly, searching for a joy that does not exist in this world.

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