Be Happy

 

 

I once read a book in a Library of a company where I worked. I have always been a bookworm so I went into this library full of resource books looking for light reading material. Sure enough I found a kind of self-help book called, “What if it were all alright?”. I have forgotten the author of the book but it changed my life. It began a journey I now know as the Law of Attraction. The Bible is full of this law if you are looking for it. An example is Philipians 4:8 ‘Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things’.  

So the book was saying we have a lot of things in life that stress us and make us unhappy and uncomfortable. What if we looked at these things and changed the way react to them. What if it is alright for it to rain just as I was about to go out for a volleyball match with my kids in the garden. What if instead of getting furious and depressed and sad, I laughed and joked about it and said ‘ah its alright, now we can play that new board game we bought and never opened.

Now I am not talking of harmful things to ourselves or our families but let’s face it, women especially have are addicted to worrying. We will often look for something to worry about, oh I have solved this problem now what can I worry about next! Those little things that are not a train smash (like a friend of mine likes to call them), what if we just ticked them off as alright. Recently in our difficult economy I have found I have learned to live without some things that used to be crucial, and I mean mandatory. Only to realise that if I left them out of list for a day or two I didn’t die, the sky did not fall and life actually went on.

In the same way, we burden ourselves with things that we have told ourselves should be perfect all the time. The doormat must face north and be at exactly ninety degrees to the little grass path in the middle of the driveway. Really!? We end up adding pressure to our families especially the husbands who will be trying to please us or to stay out of trouble. This reminds of the dining room scene in the movie, The War Room when the husband apologises for not being able to come where the wife had just had a near mugging. The wife then says, ‘It’s ok, I knew you were busy and probably in a meeting’, to which the husband is surprised because she is normally negative and not understanding.

What if we also, from today on, behave like that wife and say, its ok honey, I know you are not intentionally late for supper, you have things to do. Even though the meal is a bit spoiled it’s not worth us fighting over and spoiling the evening too. Besides you were out working for this family.

I seriously believe that our lives and our relationships would change for the better. Less stress means better health and happiness for all. As the cliché says, life is short, make the most of it. It might also assist in our quest to live like 1 Corinthians 13 Christians.

1 Cor 13:1 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.