I Had Another Epiphany! I Had Another Epiphany!

I had another….

I had another epiphany yesterday—maybe it was the day before. I realized I am not a really exciting guy doing really exciting things at this stage of my life. I am not the guy you call up at 9:00pm and say hey Mark, put on your Jordache jeans and that long sleeve silk shirt with the collar that looks like a rudder stabilizer on a 737 and let’s go clubbing! No, my epiphany is not about clubbing. It hurts.

They would either have woken me up or interrupted my reading time just before falling asleep. I would be tucked in bed in my warm jammies.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if I was to go clubbing I surely could have shown everyone how to dance to Saturday Night Live. But I would have also surely blown an ACL.

The epiphany was, as I was driving down the street in Phoenix, experiencing the first rain in the city in over 200 days, I was happy. I was, with a wave of enthusiasm, almost giddy. Whatever that looks like.

I was driving….

I was driving with at least one hand, the other moving my well-made coffee from my mouth to my cup holder. The air was cold, but I was cozy in my sweats—layers of sweats. I don’t want to hear from you guys in northern Michigan using a frozen lake to drive your car to and from, about how much of a weenie I am. I didn’t choose to drive my Honda on a lake to go get milk. I had Pandora on the Zen station, and it always plays some of the best blood pressure lowering music you can find-just like now while I write this. Go on, tune it in and see. Oh, and it was early morning and dark and no one-no one was on the street, except the warning sign on the freeway to ‘look out for street sweepers.’

The lights and colors in the morning are like no other time of day. Light hits things and they almost glow with vibrancy. The air is fresh and clean and all you really smell is wet asphalt, which-well, it would be better if we were in the woods smelling wet redwoods but those trees don’t grow here. They make nice tables and chairs however.

I have lived long enough to know Happiness is fleeting. It comes and stay and then like a rude person, getting up from the comfort of your couch and leave—without saying goodbye or even taking their drink cup into the kitchen and placing it in the sink. Happiness will come, let you enjoy them, and then just as quickly, leave you. They will leave you wanting more and it knows it.

So, we seek Happiness wherever we can. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, clubbing. But it’s never the same. It’s always a little off, not the same as before. Like that vacation you and the family took and was so fun. You decide to take it again this year and it just was, well, meh.

‘How was your vacation?’

‘Oh, it was fine.’

‘Oh, it was fine.’

We keep wanting that same experience, that same visit from Happiness we had when it was sitting on the couch, but it won’t happen. Why? Because Happiness is fleeting. It shows up when it wants to and is a tease. It is a product of, well, us. We want what we want. We won’t be happy until we get it. Then, once we get it, we want that dope again and again from something else.

‘Mark, hey, I deserve to be happy. My spouse/child/job/life (insert one) just doesn’t, well, I thought it would be different.’

Let me take this bucket of water and throw it in your face, but let me apologize for it first.

Who said you ‘deserve’ to be happy?’

The demand is all around us.

I don’t ever remember someone getting me to sign an agreement that said I was to be happy. But the demand is all around us. We would be happy with a nice car, a beautiful house, 2.5 children, a job that puts us on the cover or Forbes Magazine. Yeah, that will put a patch on something for a while. Then, it will get up off your new couch you thought would make you happy and leave.

The goal, I have learned, is instead of Happiness, can I be content in my life—right here, in this shitstorm I am in? Don’t get me wrong—again. I like Happiness. It dresses nice and smells good. But it will leave me craving more. And it won’t be the same. Contentment in my life, in this season in my life, right now in my life, comes from only one source.

God.

I can nag you.

Sorry. You must decide for yourself about this. We—I can nag you and knock on your front door and read you Bible verses and ask you if you know where you’re going after you die all day long. But it will be up to you-and those actions might just make you move even further from Dad. Your relationship with this decision will decide about your contentment. God does not bring happiness, but he does douse you with contentment-like from a firehose.

We find happiness as a product of our contentment. Those happy moments are nuggets of living, and I have had many. But those which I find myself the happiest, where I almost get giddy, is when I am content. Sometimes its driving down the highway sipping my coffee and listening to Zen music. Sometimes, its in the middle of a dumpster fire moment, a calm comes and, well, I am again content. Happiness is nowhere in the room, but I am content in my heart (Isaiah 41:13 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2041%3A13&version=NIV)

It is in this place I yearn every day to live. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. All the time now I realize I just need to surrender to Dad. “Dad, move my arms and legs today. I am too worn to make a decision.’ It is then, the face of the wrinkled, grey-haired man, sitting down the bar just a few seats, turning his scotch glass and He looks at me and smiles. ‘Certainly son, I love you.’ https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2015%3A5&version=NIV