Free to be Happy

This weekend is all about red, white and blue. Mom trained us well, and we, in turn, trained our kids: dress patriotically even if it’s out of style, and yes, a Cubs shirt will do just fine. Even Jack gets into the act, exchanging his purple collar for the old red one.

Our family, like many others, loves the colorful part of the holidays: red and pink for Valentine’s Day, yellow and purple for Easter, etc. Today it’s all about stars and stripes, flags and celebratory firewoks. Never mind that Nelson nearly lost his hand when a firecracker exploded too soon years ago. We still set them off with ooooh’s and aaaah’s after our hamburgers and baked beans.

But the 4th of July isn’t just about outfits and explosives. Yesterday I listened to a radio reading of the Declaration of Independence. Most of it is a list of the offenses suffered by the colonists under the rule of a British king. But the introduction and conclusion of the document describe the freedom these people craved. After paying the price of a bloody war, they finally did win self-rule and their independence. The 13 newly formed states became the beginning of our free nation.

It’s interesting that the Declaration’s first section, The Preamble, includes what may be the most memorized sentence in our country. School kids have recited it for centuries. It’s the one that starts with, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” God is mentioned as the Creator and humankind as “the created.”

Most interesting to me, however, is the end of this sentence that says the colonists believed all citizens had the right to pursue personal happiness. It further described what should happen to a government if that pursuit is thwarted: at a minimum, it should be altered, but if that doesn’t work, it should be abolished completely. A new government should be formed that “shall seem most likely to affect their safety… and happiness.”

Although I’ve read the Declaration before, until yesterday I hadn’t noticed the double mention of personal happiness. We’re taught in the church (and also in Scripture) that seeking one’s own happiness is not a lofty goal. We’re to “look to the interests of others ahead of our own.”

I’m extremely thankful I live in the USA and can experience the freedoms mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. One of them is that I’m free to decide whether or not to make happiness a life objective. I don’t often wrestle with this, since putting myself last on the happy-list is difficult. On rare occasions when I do it, though, the strangest thing happens. Happiness results. It’s one of life’s thought-provoking illogicalities.

Today I’ve made an effort to count my blessings, and living in a free land is high on the list. I’m thankful for those who fought for my freedom and the 234 years American citizens have enjoyed its abundance. But the best freedom of all is my option to openly follow God’s recommendations for finding happiness. And his declaration, the Bible, trumps even the very important Declaration of Independence.

“You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather serve one another in love.” (Galatians 5:13)

          

Sticky Fingers

It’s been a day of changing the cottage from a toddler environment back to that of a single adult. As I took the junior chair, bathtub toys and rattles back to the basement, my thoughts were with my daughter’s family while they winged their way back to Florida. Putting baby shampoo, the bottle brush and bottles back in their storage bins, I could almost hear Skylar’s encouraging voice: “Good cleaning up, Midgee!”

I thought back to my own days of young motherhood when I would visit Mom, kids in tow, at her orderly home set up for two adults. When she first found out she was going to be a grandma, she emptied a large cabinet and went garage-sale-ing for toys to fill it. “I want my grandkids to have fun when they come to see me,” she said.

Her wish came true. Our children and everyone else’s had a blast at Grandma Johnson’s. She encouraged all of us young moms to attend the Bible study at the church across the street, offering to babysit for our mob of little ones. We took her up on it, and when we’d return several hours later, worrying that she might be exhausted, we’d hear her say, “Back already?”

Time flew, because she was having fun.

After our kids had pulled every toy out of her cabinet, Mary and I would always stay to pick them up, encouraging our kids to help. But Mom would take them from our hands and plead, “Oh, let me do this after you leave. I have such a good time thinking back on the morning.”

“But it’s such a mess!” we’d say.

“But it’s a happy mess,” she would counter, “and I love it.”

I remember one morning when Mom took care of several of our kids and made chocolate chip cookies with them. Two year old Klaus had deposited a smudgy chocolate hand print on her white door at toddler height. Before we left I reached for a soapy rag to wipe it clean, but she stopped me. “Don’t touch that. It’s just darling.”

The next time I visited, she had drawn a square frame around the messy hand print and written “By Klaus,” along with the date. Another “happy mess.” I’ll be glad if I can be half the grandma Mom was.

Today I found some precious art-prints of my own. Four month old Micah had loved sitting on the kitchen counter in a blue Bumbo while he was here, watching us prepare meals. Yesterday I had set the Bumbo (with him in it) on the counter next to the glass cake dome, and he’d gently thumped it with his hand, the way every uncoordinated baby does. This afternoon when the sun hit that glass, half of the dome was covered with tiny prints this little guy had left with his dimpled, drool-soaked fingers, and I experienced the same rush of grandma-love Mom must have felt when she’d seen  Klaus’ chocolate hand print.

I confess to washing Micah’s art work off my cake dome today, but not before I mentally “framed” his creation in my memory. Maybe when he visits next, we’ll try to bake chocolate chip cookies together.

Children’s children are a crown to the aged.” (Proverbs 17:6a)

Light Bulbs and Sparklers

Here in Michigan we’ve been learning to live without the internet, which has been “down” since Friday at about midnight. After a violent, twisty summer storm ripped through the area, we considered ourselves fortunate to be left with some electrical power when so many had none. Adam posted my Friday blog from Florida, and I figured by the next day we’d be back on the www.

But new storms rushed across Lake Michigan with fresh fury, and finally we, too, lost all power.

Although it was difficult to be without fans during hot weather, the worst part of “going dark” was being unable to connect with you, my blog readers. You’ve been on my mind every hour during these last four days. The strange separation between us, after 288 days of communing via the blog, seemed to lay a mantle of heaviness over me.

You are precious to me. Last September, when I posted my first blog about Nate’s terminal cancer, you jumped onto that emotional roller coaster with me and helped me hang on tight. You traveled with me through 42 days of escalating disease and the excruciating death scene of my beloved husband. And you encouraged me faithfully when I stepped into widowhood and began that unwanted passage.

When I “lost” you last Friday, I felt terrible.

Our internet and electrical power jumped back to life an hour ago as I’m writing this, and even as our household was hooray-ing over lights and fans coming to life again, my thoughts raced toward you and www.GettingThroughThis.com.

A wild electrical storm is a damaging thing, but all of us go through them. Babies startle with claps of thunder, and dogs get nervous. The rest of us race through the house slamming windows, hoping a tree limb won’t come down on the house. For the most part, though, all of us make it through, in tact.

Summer electrical storms are nothing, however, compared with the storms of life we experience that have no thunder or lightning, the internal storms. One of these left me without my husband and left my children without their father. For all of us, the power sparked and died last November. A great deal of life went black.

Since then we’ve suffered through a secondary wave of storms as we’ve tried to move forward without the man we all loved. The power has shut down again and again as we’ve tried to adjust. But just as the electrical power was restored tonight after the winds and rains calmed and lines had been repaired, our relationships with Nate will be fixed one day, too. The power will return between him and all of us with a vibrancy even the best earthly relationship can’t know. It’ll be the difference between a light bulb and a sparkler.

While we wait, I’ve been able to enjoy lively relationships with all of you. My readers have been like a giant bouquet of shining bulbs to me, providing light on what would have been a much darker path without you. Please receive my most enthusiastic gratitude!

Tonight our forecast is for more storms. But even if the power shuts down, I know with certainty the tempest will pass… as all storms do, both visible and invisible. Even as we’ll hear thunder and see lightning, I’ll be thinking of how one day all of us will shine!

“Each one will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a parched land.” (Isaiah 32:2)