Happiness is a Choice

Happiness is a choice. --Mother Teresa

A young adult at 19 years old loses his eye in a car accident and is able to say only 2 weeks after the traumatic event—“Now I just have to get used to only having one eye” with a smile on his face and glad to be alive. A mother and now grandmother is diagnosed with cancer and tells me how she was in church and was able to console someone who was crying because she too had just been diagnosed with the same cancer. She then understood that even if she was given this cross to carry, it is worth it; if only to identify herself with this one other lady who was suffering also. A lady who suffered from asthma all her life was fasting for another woman in her prayer group who had some type of illness and she found that she herself was cured from her asthma after sacrificing and praying for someone else. A mother sacrifices to feed her 10 children after her husband dies by collecting plastic bottles to get them through school. Her daughter now 21 is studying to be a doctor. These are the fruits that come from suffering.

But in all these situations an acceptance of sharing in the cross of Jesus was first made. God will never give us more than we can take and He will always give us more than we can imagine with the little we choose to give Him.

Think of Peter when after all night of not catching any fish…Jesus tells Him to cast out his net one more time. Peter does so without hesitation only out of loving obedience. He doesn’t even ponder to think of the possibility that he would catch anything but maybe his faith proved stronger in not knowing. For if he had known he would have done so with full knowledge that what he was doing would be to his own interest.

These are my teachers; they teach me to stay present to what is present—they teach me how to trust. And allow me to experience a joy that is profoundly greater than the sufferings in life we encounter; simply by waking up every morning and choosing happiness.