Because I’m happy

I've been reflecting on happiness a lot lately and what it truly means to my life. How does it make me feel? How does it affect my day, my personality, my other ambitions? These are just a few of the questions that keep going through my head.  I think about a moment I can clearly remember feeling true happiness that filled my whole body and soul. This memory is not one I have to ponder over for long because I'm quickly taken back to my trip to Zimbabwe/Zambia, which I briefly wrote about here. To truly put this experience into words is near impossible because the beauty of it can't actually be expressed; it can only be felt by the soul. I wish all of you could feel that, so that you could grasp why I never want to stop talking about my year away. Why I refuse to let it become something of my past. Why deleting saved photos of elephants, children, and the savannas off of my phone is a dreadful thought. 

Through my reflections, I started to decipher why this trip trumped so many other life events, and I have come to believe that these four days are the closest I have ever been to the person God designed me to be. Free. Complete. Gracious. Spontaneous. Loving. Just writing that my heart skips a beat, making me long for a walk to the market in Zim to speak with the locals about life and southern Africa. 

When I traveled to Zimbabwe with Emily and Mallory, I was given the opportunity to see life from another different perspective. I was able to be who I wanted to be without the world around me already determining that based on their assumptions. I was free to truly exude the real portrait of me. Quirky and a little awkward. I was complete through the love I felt by others and the love I willingly wanted to share.

I'm longing for that pure bliss that came with walking from one country to another. I'm dreaming of the next day I feel that alive.  I'm wondering how to make it a part of my everyday life.  But then I think that maybe it's not a part of every day life, but rather a glimpse of the majestic home that we truly belong to, and I think of that as what I'm working towards.  I'm constantly working towards feeling more free, complete, gracious, spontaneous, and loving, because it means I'm that much closer to my Father.  I'm that much more aware of the beauty of grace.