I have some situational happiness: I'm moving tomorrow in the same zip code, my spouse and dogs are healthy, the washing machine works, and filtered water abounds. So much of our future hinges on this move, on selling our current house, and on avoiding injury while transporting hundreds of pounds of possessions 4.5 miles Southwest of our current residence. When I went to Brasil on a mission trip 13 years ago, I remember being confused when most of the people in the Shopping verbalized Good Health as a prayer request, but I understand it now. Being an adult, there is no one to take care of me other than my spouse, my God, and the friends and family around me. I cannot call out from work for sickness the way I could stay home from school. Now, absence means lost work hours, decreased income, and potential difficulty paying bills. Should the sick time exceed what is acceptable for the organization, prolonged time from work could mean rejection from the position and a resulting slew of financial problems. Moving feels like a nervy thing to face, a hope for a future existence in this pretty house that also holds risk of damage to my Great-Great Aunt Ella Mae's china, multiple car wrecks, paint scarring in the current house that still needs to sell, and spousal damage when attempting a heavy lift. My mind runs wild with problems, with maladies that all could happen, though none have yet occurred and hopefully never will. I think a primary root of this nervousness is the recent loss of my second child. When we lost the first, my heart was broken, and I went through deep and ragged pain as I yearned for death and still tried to live day-by-day. Four years and two months later, we learned that I carried our second child in my womb. I was happy. Surely the same fate would not claim this baby, this blessing to my scarred heart. But when our the ultrasound at 11 weeks showed the baby had died four weeks before, hope evaporated from within me, and I was left defenseless to again walk through the pain of losing a baby, a life I had planned on knowing and loving for the rest of my journey on this earth. So now we are moving to a beautiful house in which I planned on nursing and nurturing this baby. We are moving tomorrow, and I am squeezing my eyes shut against the risks of driving, the fear that the loan will spontaneously fail, the angst that Aaron will get hurt or that someone will drop the china given to me by Ella Mae Woodward a few years before her death. The manacles of anxiety are not rational and cannot be dispelled with a smile or a prayer. The heart instead waits to see what will happen, uttering prayers for safety and peaceful resolutions of pending events. In the midst of it all, I am thankful for the house, the health, the washing machine, and the water. Situational happiness attempts to distract from worry, and I am attempting to let it succeed.
