Love & Happiness

I can hear my all-time favorite Troubadour-turned-Pastor crooning, 

"Love and happiness
(Hey hey hey)
Make you do right
Love''ll make you do wrong
Make you come home early
Make you stay out all night long..."

and I respond with, "So will fear, Rev; so will fear The two have been so entwined in my life, all my life!" I can remember putting a bridle on anticipation and excitement because an irrational (aren't they all) fear threatened to snatch it away.  With no warning,  not even a lightning-bug glimpse, or premonition.  Just all of a sudden the love-of-my-life-and-heartbeat-of-my-heart would disappear.   Just like that! Happiness absconded; pain replacing peace. 

Lesson learned.  It pays not to be "too."  Too enthusiastic.  Too loving.  Too involved.  Too anticipatory.  Nothing lasts forever, a persistent voice whispers.  Watch your step, history warns.  Don't show your hand prematurely. You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, Kenny Rogers counsels. My bruises, bandages, and scars remind me. 

No wonder I end up in a tangle of uncertainty and insecurity.  I finally recognize that the anchor on which I rely guarantees no emotional safety net, which frightens too much to comfort.  Questions erupt: Where do love and its permanence fit into my life? How do I define happiness? Forget joy; it represents too big a leap! From where does my insecurity grow? Is my belief,  my reliance, on a "Higher Power" firm or jello-shaky? While I have called Him God since childhood, do I really know Him?

Is He "real," for real? Or is He a rope of words knotted together like beads and clasped with a sturdy safety pin? Who is Spirit? What does "Love is Spirit and Spirit never dies" mean? Really.  Have I ever been  invited to:

"Put my hand in the man of the man who stilled the water
Put my hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea
Take a look at yourself and I can look at others differently
Put my hand in the hand of the man from Galilee."

Is He the same One who stood in abject blackness and declared "Let there be light and there was light?"  Yes.   Do I trust myself enough to believe I heard the invitation correctly? Of late, I'm having to re-examine so much of what I've taken for granted.  Like Rip Van Winkle awakening from a deep slumber,  what have I used conveniently to avoid thorny issues?  Hmm.  Now, one of my favorite words---exegesis--- has rescued my soul from the doldrums the "The road not taken" engenders.  Now I exegete any and every word,  phrase, or term that carries value. 

That is, now I analyze, clarify, decode,  dissect, elucidate, expose, expound,  explain, illuminate, interpret, and search every nook and cranny of a "thing," at least once.  Yep, it takes a lot of talking, and leaves less time for long naps.