Glimpses #3
My wife will tell you that one of the silver linings of living with Dermatomyositis is that she doesn’t have to feel guilty about not going camping with me. The effects of the disease on her muscles makes sleeping on the ground extra uncomfortable. Like many of you, she also prefers to do her “camping” with the Hilton and Marriott chains. As if that were not enough, I took her on a camping trip early in our marriage. Every. Single. Thing. Went. Wrong. So, between that ill-fated expedition and the muscle issues, I decided that the kids would be my camping partners when they were younger.
We embarked on one such camping trip to Quartz Mountain in western Oklahoma when the kids were about 5 and 7. Biking, hiking, fishing, eating smores, and telling stories around the campfire that we agreed not to tell Mom about, we had a delightful time.
Upon our return, we cleaned up and as we ate dinner that night. The kids reveled in telling of their adventures. Then, my son insisted that I tell “that one story.”
“I don’t think that is a dinner-appropriate story,” I countered.
He insisted that I tell it, and I relented. Sure enough, about mid-story, he noticed that the nervous delight of our faces did not match the disapproving looks from my wife.
With dramatic timing, he flung himself on the table and said, “Stop the story, Dad! You have dislocated Mom’s happiness!”
Sure enough, we had dislocated Mom’s happiness and we spent the rest of the meal trying to relocate Mom’s happiness. (To be fair, she was playing them the whole time!)
This memorable moment offered a glimpse of unexpected joy and has provided our family with a phrase that we have used countless times since when one of us has evidently “dislocated our happiness.”
The reasons you may have dislocated your happiness are many: disease, money problems, relational tension, etc. As you follow the weekly offerings from this blog, I hope you find the tools to help you relocate your happiness.
Worth Repeating
Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.
-John Barrymore
