As happy as a bird with a french fry

Sometimes crappy feelings like discouragement and sadness bulldoze over me in an impossible to ignore way and other times they just sneak in, barely perceivable—hinting and prodding at me to give into the gloom.

This past week started as one of those barely perceivable hintings. I was starting to feel down and I couldn’t really put my finger on the why. People were even starting to ask me “are you okay?”

Was I okay? I started to analyze it. Was I feeling a bit crappy? Check. Hormonal? Yeah, probably. Did I sort of want to lock either myself or my kids away after a long spring break? Yup.

So then I started to feel sorry for myself and let that prodding voice in. Yes. My life really was pretty sucky at the moment, thank you very much. Maybe I should get out a paper and count the ways.

But then another thought came—Maybe instead of analyzing all the reasons and ways I was feeling crappy . . . maybe I should analyze my blessings instead.

You know . . .

“When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed, When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, Count your many blessings, name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.”

It’s probably the cheesiest, peppiest song there is.

But I did it. I counted my blessings and I started to feel a little better. And I told myself that I could be as happy as a bird with a French fry. And I mostly was.

But then the bulldozer came. The bulldozer is harder to ignore. It kept hitting me with all these big emotional reminders of my miscarriage. I pretty much lost it on Sunday and the thought came to me, “I don’t want to feel this pain.”

I had been having this feeling the whole week of how we are the ones who give into the bad feelings and that we can just “will them away” if we try hard enough. That I can force myself to always be happy. But I realized that it’s not always as easy as that. Life is not always sunshine and rainbows—and it’s not really realistic or probably healthy to always be happy.

But I also know that I much prefer to be happy. So I’m not going to just surrender. I’m going to fight back and I’m going to try to be as happy as that dang bird as often as I possibly can. I’m going to cry and I’m going to mourn but I’m also going to dance and sing and rejoice. I'm going to try to count my blessings as often as I can because heaven knows I have more blessings than I can possibly count. 

And I’m going to eat that dang french fry because french fries are seriously the best.   

(If you want to get your own little happy bird reminder you can purchase one ----> here.)