"I Just Want to be Happy!"

"I just want to be happy!"

"I hope she makes you happy all the days of your life!"

"When this baby gets here, I will be so happy!"

There is an epidemic of happiness in our country today.  We stand in churches and listen to couples vow to make each other happy, we sit at graduations and listen to speakers tout the importance of finding a job that makes you happy, we buy things and plan activities that will make our kids happy, and we spend each and every day pursuing our own happiness and growing angry at those who thwart our attempts to be happy.  I can't point fingers and say "it's them!  They're the happiness pursuers! Let's get 'em!"  I am guilty in my own right, day in and day out, seeking to find activities that will make my kids happy enough and will allow me to be happy enough to survive our day.  I grow angry at my son when he doesn't nap and thereby takes away my ME time, my HAPPY time (which quite honestly usually involves folding laundry or cleaning some gross orifice in my house.)  But the ironic thing about this pursuit of happiness is that it leaves me feeling wholly UNHAPPY.

Josh has started sleeping through the night, as of one week ago.  This means that for 7 whole days I have gotten a decent night of sleep, a feat that hasn't happened in 4 years!  Believe me, the heavens opened, and there were great choruses of Hallelujahs in many realms!  But guess what--it hasn't changed my happiness level.  It has given me a greater ability to cope with the eccentricities of life that come at you with a spirited four and two year-old, but I don't feel happier, as I was certain I would.  I have been in the doldrums all week.  I have been trying to fill my week with things that make me happy, things that serve me.  I've spent time with lots of friends, I have done some reading, I listened to some good music, I spent time reading my Bible and praying.  And yet, I lacked happiness.

Then yesterday I listened to a Tim Keller sermon entitled "Mission".  It was a short, 38-minute sermon on the importance of mission. It wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted a sermon on contentment; I wanted to learn how to be okay with where I am; I wanted to stop idealizing where I could be.  But the sermon title stuck out to me and I clicked on it.  Within the first 5 minutes Keller addressed the very heart of my problem.

We, as humans, and even more so as Christians, were created to live life on a mission.  It's built into the very fiber of our being to want great adventure, to uproot the evil and overcome with good, to vanquish the enemy.  We see it written all over literature, in all of our favorite movies.  The world is in peril, it is threatened by great evil, but there is one who can save the world, make all of the difference.  This is the selfless hero!  He believes that there is a greater good, greater than his own life, and he is willing to take the chance, make the sacrifice, to achieve that healing, that greater good.  As I just finished Harry Potter, this specifically resonated with me.  Book 7 of the series is tied together with threads of selfless acts that inevitably bring salvation to the world; the reason Harry can defeat Voldemort is because he walks willingly to be sacrificed.  (I didn't catch that on my first reading, but it is remarkable that the same selflessness in Lily Potter's death that protected her son is then repeated in Harry creating a protection of those he loves!)  It is the selflessness, the realization that the mission is more important than me and my happiness.  We love it in stories, but we no longer live that way.

We live in a society that is designed around pleasing ourselves.  We are bombarded with images and advertisements insinuating that more stuff will make us happy, or a thinner body, or a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  We are consumed with achieving happiness. But the ironic thing is that the more we pursue our own happiness, the less happy we seem to be.  We grow discontent because there is more out there that we NEED to make us happy.  We have our eyes fixed on ourselves and we are blind to the thing that could truly allow us to find joy.

Thus far I have been speaking about this mission in a general sense.  And I do believe that in each person the pursuit of mission will generate some joy, far more than pursuing our own happiness.  But for me, the mission is very specific, very driven.  I have been called to imitate Christ; Christ who was sent into the world to reach out to the brokenhearted and show them the face of the Father.  I have been called to go on mission to bind up the brokenhearted, to reach out to the hurting, and to point everyone to the one who is able to bring healing, to bring hope.

I know this can be where non-Christians grow greatly uncomfortable with the idea of Christianity and our "need" to "convert" others to our faith.  But Keller addressed that very thing in his sermon, and his explanation really spoke to me.  He gave the analogy of a cancer patient who had a friend who was a survivor of cancer.  If the survivor knew THE doctor, the one who had the miracle treatment that would cure this horrific disease, out of love for his friend he would not stay silent.  He would feel compelled to tell his friend everything he knew; the survivor not only knew the agony of the disease, but he knew the cure.  How, if he loves his friend, could he not tell him?  This is the story of the Christian.  I know brokenness.  I am intimately acquainted with the horrors of this world.  I am also highly aware of my own fallen nature, the ways in which I have broken this world myself.  And I know the Healer, I know the one who comes down into the muck, who reaches out His hand, and who makes me see the glory in myself and the glory that is to come.  I KNOW this Healer, and I cannot keep silent about Him.  He is the magic weapon, the secret power, the ring; He is the One spoken of in legends long ago.  He is the hero of the story, and not only does He invite me to be His sidekick, I can't help but beg Him for the role.  I want in!  I know how the story ends and I want to be a part of bringing about the change!

I've known my desire to be on mission. Not that I feel called to stand on a street corner and proselytize, or go door to door telling people about Jesus, but I do want my every day goal to be relationships where I do get to share about my Savior.  I want to interact with people, to love them, and in the process to share what Jesus has done in and through me.  For me this has been one of the more difficult aspects for me of staying home with my kids: that I have minimal interaction with the outside world in general, but specifically with the broken world.  I try to find ways to break out, to interact with other moms, to be on mission, where I am, but I falter. I start and stop.  I feel lost on where to even begin.  But one thing I learned from the sermon is that mission is going to be uncomfortable, it is going to take me out of safety and into risk.  It is going to take me off of my couch and put me in the wilderness. And if I'm honest, that's what I want.  I'm tired of the couch; I'm weary of watching other people walk the wild journey in books and movies. The search for what will make me happy will only end in frustration if I am satisfied with playing it safe, with staying home and never venturing out, never meeting new people, never going new places and trying new things. I have to risk it all.  I have to believe that the cause, the mission of sharing how Jesus has changed my life, is greater than my own personal safety, metaphorically or literally.  It's time to start living my one word for this year; it's time for me to be brave.

The idea of mission is scary, but it's also exciting!  The idea of asking God to do big things that I know I can't do on my own is really quite awesome to think about!  I want to be on a journey that glorifies God; I want my life to be about that, I want my kids' life to be about that.  So it's time to get on my knees and pray and ask God to send me.  He will; He knows that the mission, the harrowing journey is worth it for the joy set before Him, and He would not deny me that joy!  He came that I might have life and have it abundantly.

I don't just want to be happy, I want to have joy, and I want others to have joy.  I don't want it to be about me any more; I want it to be about Him. My day to day, my moment to moment, defined by His purpose for me.  It's a paradigm shift, a huge one, to set aside my selfish desires and pursue something greater. And it is completely counter culture; there will be great opposition. But I know the hero AND I know He has already won!

So then my question is: how will my day be different tomorrow because I am on mission?  I don't know yet but  you'd better believe that's what I'll be asking Jesus tonight!