Day 86, March 27

Writers are, by nature, observers. We watch. We consider. We evaluate. In the last few months, I've observed some very different individuals. I watched a wife and mother abandon her husband, her two young children, her church, ignoring covenants and promises she'd made. And I watched while her husband and the father of those two children picked up the pieces of the life they'd made together, gather his two sons close to him, and move forward in faith. I watched a husband and father leave his wife and little daughter, choosing things of the world over them. And I watched while the wife and mother forged ahead, determined to make a good life for herself and her daughter. Selfishness and selflessness, two words, derived from the same root, with vastly different meanings. The other night, I asked my grown son how he was doing. He said he had decided to choose happiness. The world has a skewed defnition of happiness, measuring it in terms of material goods and financial success, fame and notoriety. My son, still in his 30s, has a much more mature and eternal sense of what happiness means. Happiness is doing what's right, whatever the circumstances. So, for today, I am grateful for those who choose happiness.