Healing Happiness

Dave Brisbin 8.18.24 Woman tells me her daughter just left to go back to college after the summer home. How’s she doing with that? Sad, but ok. Truthfully, she’d gotten used to the freedom of an empty nest. Missed that freedom with her daughter back at home. But when daughter is away, misses her as well. We all do this. Mourn things missing to the point we miss things present. Trick is to be present to daughter when daughter is home, and when thoughts of missing freedom intrude, come back to daughter. And when daughter is gone, be present to freedom and keep coming back to it when daughter intrudes. Staying present to the ever-changing circumstances of the moment is the definition of happiness, understood as accepting moments as simply being enough. As they are. But what if current circumstances are painful, even traumatic? Will staying present still equal happiness? Presence to painful moments will hurt, but can also contain the awareness that life is still as it must be. If we’re honest, in painful situations, we’re really most present to our resistance to the pain—that it is wrong, unfair, cruel—and it often is. But once acknowledged, it’s our level of acceptance that will allow us to extend presence beyond resistance to everything else that shares the painful moment. To be more present to the connections that remain than the ones missing is the beginning of healing. Doesn’t happen all at once, but in cycles of acceptance and presence. Does this mean we just accept everything that happens without working for change or praying for healing? Of course not. But not everything that happens can be changed, and if we can’t accept that, we can’t be present, and we won’t be healed. Though we focus on the physical, in all his healings, Jesus focuses on connection first—presence. Blind see, deaf hear, lame walk, dead rise—all images of restored presence returning to new life. Regardless of whether painful circumstances can be changed, healing comes with acceptance that allows presence that feels like a return to hope and gratitude. This is the healing with which Jesus is most concerned, and ultimately, the only one that matters.