Reasonably Happy

I spent nearly the first three decades of my life chasing my interpretation of the American Dream.

I say my interpretation because the actual promise is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Somewhere along the way, my mind had twisted that into life, liberty, and the acquisition of complete and utter happiness.

It turned out that I had no idea what I was willing to gamble—or give away—in order to achieve that level of supreme happiness. Eventually, I discovered that I was willing to gamble both my life and my liberty for it.

And I never found it, because I had no idea what happiness in this life actually required.

Certainly, I knew that happiness involved finding a stable, loving relationship. It required making enough money to spend as much as I wanted on all the things that might make me happy. Most of all, it meant escaping the uncomfortable realities of my life at every possible turn.

At least, that was what I believed.

What I actually created was a life of supreme dissatisfaction—one that faltered, failed, and ultimately left me impoverished of life, liberty, and any road by which I might pursue happiness.

Or so I thought.

The Last House on the Block

Eventually, I found myself in what we in recovery often call “the last house on the block.” In my case, it was a treatment center. There, I began reciting an old prayer I had learned during an earlier part of my journey and battle with the disease of addiction:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

It is a famous prayer, but familiarity can sometimes hide its depth. These words are more than a comforting slogan. They offer a daily picture of what life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness might actually look like.

Acceptance. Courage. Wisdom.

These are the qualities that allow me to live in the world amid all its struggles, complications, and daily frustrations.

There are things over which I am powerless, and there is great liberty in recognizing that I cannot change or fix them. There is purpose in courageously accepting responsibility for the things that are mine to change. And there is happiness to be found in becoming wise enough not to confuse the two.

The Tension Between Can and Cannot

All of that sounds very nice until we actually have to live it.

It is often difficult to sit with the tension between the things we can change and the things we cannot. Believe me, there is more junk in life than I ever imagined possible. The longer I have walked the paths of recovery, pastoral ministry, and parenting, the more confusing that junk has sometimes become.

What is mine to change, and what belongs to God?

Where am I being called to act courageously, and where am I being asked to surrender?

More importantly, how can I rearrange all this junk so that I can still gain access to the American Dream I imagined as a child?

It turns out that the lesser-known portion of the Serenity Prayer has something to say about that question.

I first encountered it on the wall outside the bathroom of a recovery club whose name formed the acronym YANA: “You Are Not Alone.” I read it sometime during my first few months of recovery, when I was also, yet again, a baby Christian.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship as the
pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this
sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make
all things right if I
surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy
in this life, and supremely
happy with Him forever in
the next.
Amen

Those words were simple enough to understand and profound enough to change me.

They set my heart straight.

Learning Contentment

The goal was not to regain everything I once believed I needed in order to be happy. It was okay for the milestones I had placed along the road to supreme happiness to be lying in a pile of rubble. Marriage, career, car, freedom, and security were only some of the pieces my life no longer contained.

And yet, without any of them, I had found myself reasonably happy.

In a remarkably short period of time, I had begun to learn that life and liberty could look like living one moment at a time, accepting hardship, and taking the world as it was rather than continually trying to manipulate it into what my warped understanding of happiness said it had to be.

The Apostle Paul describes something similar in his letter to the Philippians. Writing from imprisonment, Paul says that he has “learned to be content” whether he has little or plenty (Philippians 4:11–12).

Paul does not say that he naturally possessed contentment. He says he learned it.

Contentment is not pretending that everything is fine. It is not denying our losses, abandoning hope, or refusing to change what can and should be changed. It is the slow discovery that our ability to live fully today does not have to depend upon finally arranging tomorrow exactly as we want it.

When Everything Is Lost

A few years ago, Florida was hit by two hurricanes within weeks of each other. During the first storm, a dear friend and colleague Erica lost her home to floodwaters. Two weeks later, she lost her church to floodwaters.

When I reached out simply to offer my love and compassion, she asked, “You know the last part of the full Serenity Prayer?”

“Well, yes, I do,” I said.

“I’m focusing on being reasonably happy,” she replied.

That, my friends, was a deep reminder to me.

Here was my friend, who had lost nearly everything in two weeks, and her focus was not on getting it all back. She was not pretending the losses did not hurt or that rebuilding did not matter. She was simply refusing to postpone the possibility of life until everything had been restored.

Her focus was on being reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with God in the next.

That is not resignation. It is hope.

It is the kind of hope that allows us to grieve what has been lost without believing that everything meaningful has been lost with it.

Enough Grace for Today

I say all of this because I need to hear it, and I suspect you may need to hear it too.

The pursuit of supreme happiness can lead us into places where we would rather not set foot. It can convince us to sacrifice the life we already possess for an imagined life that always remains just beyond our reach. Sometimes life itself takes us into seasons and places we did not choose—and all the itinerant pastors of the world said, “Amen.”

We may not be supremely happy in all those seasons and places. But being supremely happy in this life was never the goal—not for the Christian, not for the recovering person, and perhaps not even for those simply trying to live out the best promise of the American Dream.

Jesus does not promise us a life in which every discomfort can be escaped or every circumstance brought under our control. Instead, he teaches us to pray for “our daily bread.” He tells us not to become consumed with tomorrow because today already contains enough trouble of its own (Matthew 6:11, 34).

That is not a command to stop planning or hoping. It is an invitation to stop demanding that tomorrow make us happy before we are willing to receive the life God is giving us today.

Supreme happiness belongs to the fullness of life with God, when Christ makes all things right. Today, we are invited to something humbler and perhaps more attainable:

To be reasonably happy.

Today, we can receive what we have been handed—the good, the bad, and the what the heck, God, seriously? We can ask for the acceptance to release what we cannot control, the courage to take responsibility for what is ours, and the wisdom to know the difference.

We can live one day at a time. We can enjoy one moment at a time. We can accept hardship without calling it good, and we can pursue change without believing that our happiness depends upon controlling the outcome.

Somewhere in that daily practice of acceptance, courage, wisdom, and trust, we may discover that life and liberty and happiness were not waiting for us at the end of the pursuit.

They were gifts God had already placed in our hands.