Intensely Happy

Not prone to introspection, this was an interesting weekend that ran the gamut of emotion. After two staff dinners at our house, an unexpected thaw of our freezer requiring “cook it or lose it”, a new project at work, and late night sessions watching the Olympics, my energy level was low. Still, I wanted to join in the Welcome Dinners for new international students by hosting them for dinner Saturday night. We also had an offer to join our old dinner group in Little Rock for Freddy’s famous fish fry, and that sounded really exciting to our sometimes homesick hearts. What to do?

GUILT: As is sometimes the case for us, who like to keep our options open, the options expired without taking action. First, the LR trip was checked off, then the Welcome Dinner. The consolation was that with forecast of rain, we could just stick around and work on our projects. I don’t usually work on Fridays, but last Friday was spent at the office until later than usual and I ended up sleeping on the couch during the coverage of Day 7 then sleepily slipping off to bed—no projects yet. Saturday morning, I got up early to wrap a birthday present for Tozer’s Birthday Party #2 and I was glad we could be in town for that.

FEAR: While wrapping the little package, though, an alarming thought gripped me with fear. “Where are those two (sizable) checks I swept up and stuck somewhere when cleaning up the house last Thursday?” A quick look around in the usual hiding places yielded no results and my anxiety level cranked up a notch or two, but I was due to pick Liz up for the party. I kept telling myself it didn’t make that much difference, but that occasional fear that is not only in your head and heart but also moves down to your stomach was taking hold.

DISCOURAGEMENT: Here it was already Saturday approaching noon, we had missed the opportunity to go home in order to stay home and catch up, but now I was doomed to scouring the house for the missing checks. What do John and Gloria do in circumstances such as these? We took off for an outing to the A-Z store in Alma (45 miles) for an afternoon adventure to get our minds off of the lost checks.

ANXIETY: “Should we try to get back and help our friends now with their international dinner?”
occasionally checking my watch. Another expired option—pizza special picked up from Papa Murphy’s—more watching of the Olympics with one sleepy eye open (still no projects).

ELATION: In the middle of the night, I woke up and passionately asked God to remove the distraction of the lost checks and bring to mind where they might be. (I had tried this to no avail earlier in the day.) In a few minutes, after “walking backwards in my mind” as I used to remind our guys, the thought came to me that I had put an open shoebox on the floor by my bed, so in the dark, I reached over there and immediately put my hand on the blessed box. A quiet trip to the front room confirmed that the missing checks had been there all along, so it was easy to go back to sleep.

MORE FEELING A LITTLE GUILTY: Sunday morning, John’s ongoing sinus congestions was really bothering him. We were on the schedule to greet at church, so we took our positions at the door and decided to sit on the bleachers at the side since he was afraid he might need to get up and leave. Halfway through, we decided he would be better off in the open air (always the case) and on the way out decided we ought to try to redeem the weekend by going on a Sunday afternoon outing to check out the fishing spots he knew about and try to discover new ones. Lee’s short message (to be followed by an interactive activity) was on the Beattitudes, saying “blessed” means “intensely happy”. Being a good Perspectives graduate, I know we are blessed to be a blessing, but “intensely happy” seemed a bit illusive.
INTENSELY HAPPY: The trip to Beaver Dam proved to be just that kind of experience. The weather was near a perfect 10. We sat and listened to the horn blast and watched the water start to flow and felt the cool air moving up toward us. We finished off our picnic on the rocks, laughed at Zipper doing his cute things, and took a few crazy pictures. On the way back through Eureka Springs, we stopped off at Thorncrown Chapel and took more pictures to send to Easton for his “forget me not” book with the chapel in the background. Two often unphotogenic people actually produced some great pictures in the idealic setting. We returned, energized by the day and actually set out to paint the garden benches, clean the grill and do other outside projects.

DISAPPOINTMENT: Downloading the pictures on to the computer is something I’ve never felt very confident in doing, but I wanted to surprise John and do it without asking for help. I’ll spare the details, but—long story short—I forgot to save them and uncharacteristically erased them from the camera. My dear persevering husband spent a very long time trying to retrieve them, but the images were as fleeting as the happiness of the day. After the up and down experiences of the weekend, it was quite a blow to both of us.

So…we both seemed to be processing hard the state of blessedness. This is the life laboratory where it is mixed and the holy compound is produced. I want to record this to recall later because—like fish caught below the dam--we tend to remember the big events but the little ones get away, even though they are daily building blocks of discovering the sufficiency of transformed thinking. Placing lost checks and pictures on the grid of the constancy of the joy of walking in the light is the essence of walking in the Spirit. Monday morning, we find we are a little stronger in our resolve to walk by faith, a little more familiar with our heavenly Father, with a little more insight into how blessing overflows in the most unexpected places.