Happy

Do you ever have a day where you just feel happy and that all is right with your world, but have no real reason to feel that way?  In fact, you can think of several reasons why you shouldn't feel happy, but you don't feel unhappy?

I'm having that day today.  I'm not a naturally optimistic person.  Those who know me best know that I work consciously at seeing the good and positive aspects to situations.  So, when I have a day like today, a day where I just feel life is good, for no reason, I know that I am growing.  I know that God is working.

I'm coming up on 3 years "post D-day".  In infidelity circles, that is "Discovery Day".  It's a day that, for the millions of people affected, forever changes their life's timeline.  June does not roll around without me thinking of it.  June has been an emotional month for years.  I had two babies who would have been due in June.  Neither of them made it.  And then there was "D-day".

I'm aware of June in a different way than other months.  This year, however, it doesn't feel very "big", for lack of a better word.  There are other things going on.  This year, on June 30, my parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary.  We're having a big party and we're very much looking forward to it.  The kids and I are heading off the following day for a 2-week holiday (partly with my parents and siblings).  We have fun things to look forward to.

But it's also not very big, emotionally, this year.  I knew last year, at 2 years post D-day, that I was not healed yet.  I had experienced some victories in that regard, but knew I had a ways to go.  This year is different.  If I'm not totally healed, I'm pretty darn close.  And the best part, I can see palpable ways my oldest child has healed.  This IS big.  I don't even know how to go into all the ways this child has been hurt by the past 3 years of his life.  And the results have been terrifying at times.  Terrifying to the point of me feeling like my beautiful, amazing son was headed for a very pain-filled future.  Somehow, God has been moving in him.  I see glimmers and signs of hope in him.  I just watched a young boy walk the 4 year old from across the street, across the road, holding her hand, because she never looks both ways.  Nobody asked him to do that.  He just did it.  He is showing more signs of empathy toward his siblings, which was a major problem a year ago.

I am learning that I cannot control the timeline of my children's healing.  And their healing will always be more complex than my own because, emotionally, I am not, and never will be, connected to their father ever again.  But they are.  And will be for their entire lives.  He's their dad.  Period.  They will deal with healing with every stage of life they enter.  And I know that all I can do is pray.  Pray for them.  Pray with them.  And as I've done that, I'm seeing new and different children emerging, in the same way a new me has emerged.  I told my counsellor, almost two years ago, that I am fundamentally a different person than I would have been if I had never been betrayed.  And, to my greatest dismay, so were my children.  The selfish act of their own father, their own flesh and blood forever changed the people they would become.  It felt like the greatest injustice.  But in the way it has been making me a better person, why can't it do the same for them?!  Our great, amazing, phenomenal God can do anything, so why not make the different people my children have become (and will become), BETTER people?

Maybe God's healing will cause them to be more compassionate.  Maybe the faith we have as a family with only one parent will cause their own faiths to strengthen.  It's hard not knowing the outcome of my kids' spiritual lives.  I know what I desperately hope and pray for them, but in the end, it will be their choices that will guide them.

But, for today, I see a 9 year old boy who is showing more joy and "spirit" than I've seen in awhile.  He has been riddled with fears, anxiety, worry, pain, and I'm slowly seeing his true spirit emerging.  He smiles more. He is calmer.  He seems to be worrying less.

God is healing.  God is the reason I feel happy for no reason.  Or maybe, maybe, it is for all of His reasons.