Sara Groves is my all time favorite Singer/Songwriter. I like to say she writes the soundtrack to my life. Her songs are musical bookmarks in the chapters of my life.
When I hear "Jeremiah, tell me 'bout the fire..." I remember my single days, driving in my little Saturn on Seminary Road in Northern Virginia. "He's always been faithful to me..." brings me back to a time when I learned to be thankful for things I'd always taken for granted - like my husband's beating heart, or a potato in my pantry.
And when I hear "I wish those two could see us now, they never would believe how there are different kinds of happy! Different kinds of happy!" I remember the day I realized how hard I had been striving for something ridiculously out of reach and undesirable - someone else's happy.
My expectations of life have been skewed for so long. And I have been grieving for unrealized dreams. Proverbs 13:12...a hope deferred makes the heart sick. And boy, has my heart been sick.
I got mad about it. I got jealous of what other people had, then I got mad. And finally, I got really, righteously angry. Want to know why? Because I realized I had been believing lies. I'd been believing everything the world has been telling me about how my life is supposed to look, and what I need to be happy. I focused on that unrealistic dream, blinding myself to the amazing, real goodness in my life.
Now my heart is set on a different dream, a different kind of happy. The rest of Proverbs 13:12 says "...but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life."
And just on the other side of that lovely thought is Psalms 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." The soul-satisfying truth there is not that God will just give you whatever you want, but that he will plant HIS righteous desires in the hearts of his children and bring them to fruition in his time.
So I am ordering my life differently. I'm paying attention to the hard truths in scripture, and I'm trying "to clean my house and set it straight, and not let pride get in the way"...yes, as Sara would put it.
This is my different kind of happy - the happy that comes from believing and trusting God to do what he said he would do.
"...as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15
