Happiness is Your Birthright!

Happiness is not an emotion I was previously familiar with.

Many have spent a lifetime searching for this very elusive feeling of happiness. Thankfully my search lasted only forty-two years.

It would be untrue of me to say that I have never experienced moments of pleasure – but looking back they were not happy times.

I have come to learn why happiness has eluded me for so long. It is simply that my search, like many of yours, was always external, looking to objects and people to fill me with happiness and joy.

Over the past couple of months, as I re-create my living space to reflect who I am at the core, as I re-create old dreams and make new ones of a life truly worth living – as I define it – I am happy and free for the first time in my forty-two years!

If one has to stop think whether one is happy – then that is not happiness.

These days, as I wake up each morning and I thank the Divine for one more day, I know I am happy because I am living the life that I always wanted and what was meant to live. As my favourite Bishop, John Spong, loves to say, “I am loving wastefully and being all that I was meant to be!”

Certainly, there are days when the temptations to slip into the prevailing chaos, drama and sheer despair still arise. Today was one such.

What I have come to learn, however, is that because I am now far more open to experiencing each moment as they arise, allowing whatever emotion that presents itself to just be and allow myself to be loved by the angels who turn up to guide me – I return to happiness.

Despite today's temptation, the past week or so since my last post has been some of the happiest days of my entire life!

It started with my return to my church home – where I was greeted like the prodigal child. The love I felt was phenomenal not to mention the fact that my new size 12 made me a sight to behold (how modest I have become ha-ha).

Years ago, a tarot reader on a beach in Jamaica told me that my daughter was an older spirit than I am. I have come to realize that he was right on. Over the last few months she, along with her boyfriend who is really the son I lost back in Kiev over twenty years ago, have been my guide, persons who remind me that my happiness comes from honest and open relationships with my fellow human beings.

Mark Twain wrote that the best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer someone else up and that has been a surefire remedy for me. My job affords me the opportunity to do that everyday. I have been blessed to be able to continue for a couple more months working with a team that not only nurtures my growth but looks out for my security.

I was feeling a bit down in the weather on Good Friday after walking through the inner-city of Edmonton for the 27th annual “Way of the Cross,” and seeing the poverty that prevails in the richest province of Canada. My phone rang soon after I hauled myself into bed after taking a tranquilizer to get some sleep. It was a woman-friend calling from the hospital.

Within thirty minutes I was by her side as we waited for her partner to come out of surgery and it was the happiest moment for me – to be there for her and to witness the love in her partner’s eyes when she saw her. I was not envious, because I know that one day I too will have that in my life. I quietly left and drove home at about 11:00 p.m., thanking God for the chance to have been there for my woman-friends.

Another quote that I like is one from John Barrymore that says “Happiness sneaks in through the door you never knew you left open.” That has certainly been the case for me these past few weeks. My internet dating exploits have been more a source of entertainment than a serious attempt on my part to find a mate. But, “happiness has sneaked in…” I will leave that to your imaginations.

And then there are the times when others attempt to encroach on your happiness. What I have come to learn is that I can allow them to pitch a tent and capture my happiness land or I can evict them forthwith.

I am choosing the second option – as happiness is a form of courage and I am one brave woman.

I refuse to any longer allow anyone to occupy what belongs to me and pull me down to their level of unhappiness and darkness. I will take whatever human steps necessary to ‘defend’ my own and then fall to my knees in prayer knowing that there is a higher power who is merciful and just.

I am happy! I have never been happy before and I have worked hard over the last six months, I have crawled out of the bottom of the pit and I am now basking in the sun of happiness. And nobody is going to rain on my parade! P, you can take that to the bank, girlfriend!

It is said that we tend to forget that happiness does not come as a result of getting something we do not have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

I recognize and appreciate all that I have – it might not be as much as anyone else has but it is my gift from a loving God. Happiness is my birth right and I claim it now!

Do you?

Blessings,

Claudette