There is a movie called Inside Out, and I had heard about it and was asked to watch it by a good friend. I was skeptical, but watched it, and I really think its one of those life changing movies that if you delve a little deeper than the surface, you will learn something about yourself that perhaps you did not know.
What do we search for in life? What is the one thing that everyone wants? (well besides an unending supply of bacon). Happiness. We all want happiness. We want to feel joy, we want everything to always be sunshine and roses. We get up on a cloudy day and curse the rain. We make plans, and it snows and we are angry. (Totally guilty on this one) If things aren't perfect in our little words, we are sad, or angry, or disgusted, or depressed. But what if there is more to it than this?
If we were always happy, would we be appreciative? If we never knew sadness, would we appreciate the things that make us happy? If we never experience rain, would we understand the beauty of a warm sunny day? If we never felt the bone chilling cold of a snowy day, would we really appreciate a warm blanket and a cup of hot chocolate? If we never felt loss, would we really understand love?
Life isn't about being happy. It's about living. Experiencing all that life has to offer. The good and the bad. I understand this more than many because I struggle with deep dark depression. At times, it almost feels hard to breathe when it gets so bad. But because I have felt these deep and dark emotions, I know how good happy feels. Happiness isn't the lack of problems, it's knowing that it can get worse and cherishing every second that it isn't. Love doesn't just come when things are rosy, it stays when things are hard. But there is still more.
What happens when we are happy? When we are happy, and we have all we could want or need, we tend to take credit for that. We don't really need anyone else because our little world is happy. But when things go wrong, and they always do at some point or another, that is when we need others. God has our lives all intertwined. We have a circle of friends, and those friends have a circle of friends that includes some of ours, but not all. And each circle spreads out bigger and bigger until everyone is included. Well, except for those who close themselves off from the circles, and try to make it through this life on their own, But that is not what God wanted, or intended. And those people are going to face a lifetime of pain and loneliness. This I also know, because there are times I have walled my heart and life up, to keep people out, thinking I was protecting my heart from pain, but realizing that I was also shutting out happiness.
In the movie, the character had a memory that she thought was simply happy. It was a core memory, one of those that lasts a lifetime. But as they delved into the memory, it wasn't what it first appeared. I won't give anything away, so I will transfer the lesson to my own experiences. I can think of a really bad time in my life when my marriage fell apart. If I focus only on the fact that my marriage ended, that is a TERRIBLE time in my life. But if I expand on that memory a little bit, and look at it from other angles, it's also an awesome time in my life. God had a circle of friends prepared and on standby. That moment things ended, I sent out two texts, and those people immediately started to pray for me. When I went to church and told my Sunday school class that I needed extra prayers, they did. They held me up, both prayerfully and literally over those next days, weeks and months. Friends helped me financially, they brought me food. They followed me out of church services when my emotions got out of control and I needed to cry. They let me talk, they drove me to work when the roads were bad. They told me jokes, they sent me texts to check on me, they hugged me and told me they loved me. So what was the time really? It was horrible, but it was good at the same time.
I think all of our life can be looked at this way. There are always things going on that we don't realize at the moment, that we might only see looking back. I have painful issues in my life with my adoption, but looking back I can see God weaving intricate pathways for me to follow, rerouting me when I got off track (which happened a LOT), I can see people He placed in my life. love that was given unconditionally.
Every aspect of our life has meaning. We need the clouds and rain, we need the snow (but not a lot of it, please-thank you.) We need the hurt and the pain and the tears. We need to experience the death of loved ones and lost friendships, broken relationships, and arguments. Because only when we have these experiences, will we ever know the true happiness and joy of the birth of a baby, new friendships, meeting your true love, and how good it really feels to laugh. And unless you have tasted really BAD cheap bacon, you will never appreciate the really good, meaty, perfectly cooked and crispy bacon.
Life is what we make it. We need to find the lessons in the hard times. and learn to look for that silver lining in even the blackest of clouds. We need to appreciate even the hard parts of life, and even more so, the people that God has given us to help us through the hurtful parts. Look over your memories, find the ones that hurt, and turn them from side to side, and see if there isn't something buried in there that is good. Don't look at it from the pain of being there, but look at it through new eyes. I have a lot of memories of my own to examine, But I am hopeful that I can see new things, and put the bad parts of those memories to rest, and realize that something good came from all of those times. My emotions can get pretty raw, but I am so thankful that I have the ability to feel. And throughout all the sadness, I have learned so much about how GOOD happy feels.
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