Happiness is...

Happiness is...

* A perfectly ripe avocado

* A shared secret smile with a stranger

* Boots on just about any yucky weather day

* Smart Wool socks

* Cuddling up in bed after hearing someone shoveling your sidewalk on a snowy morning

* A perfectly timed song that meets you right where you are

* A coat in your perfect shade

* Romance viewed with a hope-filled heart of excitement

* Seeing an idea blossom into reality

* Trying something that once caused you trepidation and now brings satisfaction

* A clean kitchen

* Pedicures and flip flops...the perfect partners

* A heart-to-heart hug

* Sunshine on my face...or anywhere for that matter.

* Worshipping Jesus heart, soul, spirit, and body

* Watching raw talent emerge and be recognized

* Belly laughs in any way, shape, or form

* Solo dance parties

* Having friends who know you so very well in the smallest and biggest of ways

* Books that are written as if for your heart alone

* Hugs from nieces and nephews

* Dogs

* New views, new roads, new horizons, new mysteries to solve

* Snow falling gently when you have no place that you have to be

* Love

* Sharing with others what makes you uniquely you and what makes them uniquely them

* Views that stir your heart to create, worship, sing, and live deeply

* A "randomly" chosen Pandora station filled with songs that sing your heart's song

* Sunroofs, sunny days, and loud music

* A place to pour out the words that fill your heart

What's on your list?

A New Lens

A lightbulb went off...an A-Ha moment for me. Our culture is trained to focus on the drab, to highlight what is wrong, to use a critical eye. It comes in small ways such as our food preferences and clothing choices or big ways like where we choose to live and which neighbors we reach out to love. Sometimes it manifests in the spoken word where other times the criticisms grow inside of u like a vine climbing up the side of a house.

Eventually those vines will spread from a straggly growth to a wall covering, changing a tan colored house to green. Vines starve and creep and entwine and spread until they can no longer be pulled away by hand but require clippers, gloves, ladders, and brute strength.

A quote I read by Erasmus says,

"A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit."

What if we consciously choose to focus on beauty, to highlight the positive, to train our eye and our thoughts to dwell on loveliness?

The Bible tells us,

"Let all that is within me bless His name."

So if I choose to dwell on loveliness, I am essentially blessing God for His creation in people and in my world. This does require practice though...practice until it becomes second nature. Hammer out those nails and hammer in beautiful thoughts of thankfulness and honor.

And as I practice thinking on that which is good, pure, lovely, kind, true, and admirable in everything around me (Phil 4:8), I'm essentially putting weed killer on the roots of those creeping vines. That makes it much easier to live free, unentangled, able to run!

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us..." Hebrews 12:1