Choose happiness

Happy Holy Week! It looks like it will be a stormy week in these parts, but we'll be decorating eggs and attending services and making preparations to celebrate the resurrection nonetheless.

I've had this topic churning around in my head for awhile and decided to make it a post (or series of posts) because it seems to define my personal philosophy at this point in life.

I remember talking to a friend a few years ago about our storage woes in this house. This was before Olivia came along, so we had more space than we do now and were already starting to feel crowded in this house. We'd accumulated stuff and created weird and disproportionate attachments to things that we did not need/use/even know we had. I kept thinking, if we just had a basement, or a bonus room, or a storage room...something. THEN we'd be happy with our house.

A friend of mine had a huge, sprawling house that was necessary for her large family, but it was a uniquely designed house and the set-up made certain aspects of life inconvenient. Bedrooms were in weird places, the laundry was downstairs, there was no physical way to corral kids into one room in the house because of the layout...it just made life a little difficult. They spent several years renovating where they could. And then she made a statement that stuck with me. "I finally decided to choose happiness with this house. It's large enough for my family, has a nice sized yard, is conveniently located...so we made changes to make things easier inside and then decided to be happy with it."

Choose happiness. That stuck with me. So often people are dissatisfied with their job or house or car or whatever. People spend so much time and money and effort moving and changing and buying, and so often they are still unsatisfied with their circumstances. We spend altogether too much time being unhappy and not enough time enjoying the blessings of what we have.

I had intentions of adding more to this post, but the kids are whining to go outside and today is probably the only day this week that we can. More on this topic later.