Starting to Smile again... Thanks to Good Friends!
A friend said that as long as they have known me I have been "skirting happiness". I understood what I think they meant to say, which was that happiness has always seemed just out of my reach. Not that I have been doing anything to skirt happiness.
I find true joy in my son and in fatherhood like I have never found joy in anything else. I praise God for the blessings my son bestows upon me. I strive to be the best father I could ever be and keep to the responsibilities I have of being the force in his life that is guiding and molding his way.
It easy to find discouragement in circumstances, and I have found myself there. I had to make some difficult and very hard choices lately that have been an introspective look into my own soul... my deepest desires, wants, and needs. I have found inner strength, lost 50 lbs, and I am breathing deep the air of life.
I have discovered that I am as capable to experience joy as I am capable to experience pain. Pain happens as a result of an experience... Why can't happiness happen as a result of the experience of joy? I think it can, which means we have to rewire some of the hard wiring in our minds. We have to make a choice that we will experience joy and live above our circumstances. Look, I am not an expert... not even close... even the 'experts' aren't experts... they just have a revelation that allows for a slightly higher form of thinking. Perhaps even a removal of their hearts from the issues. I enjoy experiencing feelings. I enjoy it even more when those fellings cause me to enlighten my thinking by raising the standards by which I gauge my mind and emotions.
In other words... I smiled yesterday.
It wasn't a smile at my son for his hystericalness: sidenote: my mother always told me I could entertain myself easier than I could entertain others. I never really knew what she meant, but I do now. My son has the unique ability, he got it from me, to find humor and smile and bring joy into a situation that would otherwise be serious. You cannot help but smile and laugh at his power. He is a super hero with the power of laughter. He brings me to my roots and I look at that PURE JOY and it heals me. My smile yesterday was that I realized I am overcoming my circumstances and not allowing them to rule me.
There are things in each one of us that lye dormant until someone or something awakens them. These things have the abilities to be good, evil, or both. Think of them as keyholes that have a desire to be unlocked. It doesn't mean they should be, just that they could be.
I have found that certain people in my life have unlocked things in me that cause me to experience joy. Joy at the thought of them, joy at the words they have spoken, joy at their counsel. There are others in my life that have opened the same places with their own key, but for whatever reason, locked that place up again. I am experiencing freshness and a longing for wanting more and wanting to have more pulled from me. At junctures in our lives, we have to examine our motives, postures, desires, for wanting certain locks in our lives to be opened or locked back up.
I am human. I make mistakes. I want to be happy. I want to enjoy life. I want to be safe from life's betrayals. I want to lead when there is no leader. I want to follow a leader I can believe is leading me into a direction I believe in. I want to be entreated by those closest to me. I want to love. I want to be loved. I want to experience physical and emotional intimacy as a result of the closeness of those who know me. I want to be remembered for the good things I have done. I want to be forgiven for my faults. I want to ..... live.
