Happy

The Primary sharing time yesterday was titled "Heavenly Father's plan is a plan of Happiness."  The woman who taught the lesson did a brillant thing with the senior primary group.  She had a piece of chart paper on the board and she invited children to come and play tic-tac-toe with her.  The rules were that they had to play where she told them to play.  The first three children she let win.  The second three children lost.  After that, she asked for another volunteer, but no one wanted to play.  The comments that came from the children were extremely insightful:

"It's boring to play when you don't get to make choices about where you go."
"I don't like winning when I didn't get to use my own strategy.  I'd rather lose."

Satan's plan was like playing tic-tac-toe according to his rules. He wanted us all to return to Heavenly Father, but we had to do exactly what he told us to do.  She did an amazing job of drawing those parallels and explaining to the children the difference. 

It was a good reminder to me of many things.  After spending a week with my cousins, many of whom are struggling with consequences of some really challenging decisions, I have been really reflective of my own situation and happiness level. 

Am I happy?  Hell, yeah!  Am I perfect? No. Is my life what I want it to be?  Not yet. Have I made some horrible decisions?  Yes!  Do I always make good decisions?  No.  Am I struggling?  Yes.  Do I have days of loneliness, sadness, anger, grief and frustration? Absolutely!  But am I happy?  Yes.

My happiness journey has been interesting. I went through a phase where happiness was derived from things -- shoes, clothes, computers, cars, phones, etc.  If I had enough things, I would be happy.  During another phase, I felt my happiness could only come from a relationship -- I never had enough friends, and persued every relationship opportunity presented to me, thinking that would make me happy.  One period of time, I felt happiness would only come from appearance -- I did some dangerous things to my body and spend way to much money trying desperately to lose weight and look a certain way.  If I was pretty enough, I would be happy. I've gone through the perfection phase, almost killing myself trying to be absolutely perfect in every way so I could be happy. 

Today - I choose happiness. I laugh things off. I give people the benefit of the doubt. I cut myself slack. And I realize the only true source of happiness is the direction your life is headed.