Annoyances are still annoying

I’ve been looking at this blank page now for two hours.  I know what I want to say, but I haven’t found the right way to say it.  It is not that I do not have the words; I do have them, and they just refuse to come together.  Mostly what I have is emotion right now.  I feel what I want to say, but those feelings are too big or too complex or too deep to rise to the surface of my consciousness.  I do believe I am a genius in my sub-conscious mind.  My conscious mind is considerably less so.  Therefore, there are times when they don’t seem to be able to communicate with each other.

I have become happy; however, not silly happy.  This happiness has not come through my circumstances in life.  It is more like joyous contentment.  It does not seem to be contingent upon what may or may not happen in the future.  There are points of impending devastation looming close to the horizon.  A few may even be a good bit closer.  But even they, as painful as they will be, do not threaten my confidence that pain will inevitably generate joy.

What started this musing, in part, is the realization that Jan and I will celebrate our forty-fifth wedding anniversary this coming Saturday.  We started out with a great burst of happiness.  But cohabitation seems to have a way of revealing the incompatibly in us.  There were struggles.  Happiness still visited us regularly, even frequently, but didn’t always hang around with a high level of enthusiasm.  We were both in school, we started having children, we had to work, and we struggled with having enough money.  Everybody does.  But there was always one thing we could each hang on to; God made us one, and nothing could undo that oneness without our permission.

Most of the things that annoyed me back then still annoy me today.  She would say the same. But the annoyances have become more funny quirks and points of amazing love. I love this woman. That may have started out as something I did, but now it is who I am.  God has never stopped making us one; not whole but One!  I don’t understand when it is happening, but I am overwhelmed by the marvel of this miracle.  This marvelous work of God is not His work on us but in us and between us.  This marvel is a major part of my happy life.

If God in His wisdom were to take Jan from my presence, I will continue to marvel as His promises will interpret my circumstance to reveal His Kingdom coming in and around me.  My future may be filled with pain, but tomorrow will be no less the continuation of the Creator’s work.  He will waste nothing.  Pain, disappointment, or failure will not dilute His promises. I can be happy with His promises.

As an old saying goes, “I’m as happy as a clam at high tide.”  The clam is happy at high tide because the clam digger can’t capture him. The clam is covered by water. Jan and I are living in the high tide of the promises of God, and we know we are protected by His love. 

Photo: Fred Baldwin. Kayak rentals on Catalina Island, California.