It is early Easter morning. A happy day. A joyous occasion. Often, when we are overwhelmed by our grief, fears or anxieties, we fail to see happiness even as it already stares us in the face – just like the apostles and the disciples on that first Easter morn. Just like me when I keep living in the past or hoping for a better future – I fail to see the joys of the present.
Since moving to the US some five years ago, life for Anabelle and me has pretty much settled to the very routine and ordinary. There are times I miss the hectic schedules I used to keep, the big projects I used the manage, and the days when life seemed to be one big party after another. Today, life is very predictable: driving the kids to school, keeping house for Martin and family, movie date on Monday nights, RCIA meetings on Tuesday evenings, ILM classes on Wednesday evening, hiking or family gatherings on weekends. Ho-hum.
This Easter morning, I am realizing that my cup runneth over – with committed love, with deep happiness and abiding joy. And I literally count my blessings:
- I am happy I can take so many nature hikes like I have never done before. I have hoarded pictures, stored a lot of memories and gained so many insights just soaking myself in nature.
- I am happy Anabelle and I can do gardening together. We often bicker over where and what and how to plant but smiles are inevitable when we see the flowers bloom and the tomatoes ripe for picking.
- I am happy singing songs – real ones, made up ones, crazy ones – as we drive Jane to school. Every day is different as Jane always has a new song to sing or a new way to sing an old one or has just invented another set of new gibberish words she has put music into.
- I am happy watching Jonathan and friends playing their interminable games, shrieking in sheer delights, playing games I am nowhere near the first step in understanding, much less learning how to play.
- I am happy for the early morning hours of silence and aloneness when I can engage the Lord in prayer.
- I am happy to explore new places or new corners in old places around the beautiful Bay Area where we are.
- I am happy the different festivals and sampling the different cuisines of the different cultures that make up the multicultural communities around the area.
Yes, life is what you make of it and happiness is truly a decision. I am strengthened by the thought that no matter what life deals me, I can always decide to be happy. There are certain givens that enable me to decide to be happy. My life is a given – as a present, unmerited. The first condition to be happiness is the being here. Then, there is the love I receive everyday – as a present, undeserved and often unconditional – from God, my family and my friends. With life and live, I am equipped for to make everyday a happy day.
The women and Peter and John, on that first Easter morning, just saw their grief turn into panic and anxiety, as they stared at the empty tomb. It took a while before they realized that they have come upon the source of unending happiness and abiding joy. This is what Easter is all about: an intense encounter with the Source of eternal life, immortal love and perpetual light.
Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
John 20:1-9