Choosing Happiness

Finals week is upon us here at Franciscan. As a freshman, I was skeptical of all the posts I would see about people falling over dead from lack of sleep or caffeine overdose.. But now that I'm here, I can confirm that the rumors you hear about finals week are true. ALL OF THEM. It's really weird to watch the students on our obnoxiously joyful (I mean that in the best way) campus turn into zombies, but I guess that's what stress does to a person. The more I think about the intensity of finals week, I can't help but think about how life kind of drains the joy out of everyone at one time or another. Whether it be a crazy situation in your family, tough stuff at work, finals week, high school drama, health issues... Life is just really hard sometimes. It's easy to throw in the towel and let the crap in life win. But I want to let you know that the easy thing isn't always what's best.

I'm not going to sit here and preach to you that life is just always so beautiful and easy and "oh my goodness how can you just not be happy every moment of everyday?!?!" because that would be called lying and I would just be wasting my time annnnnd look pretty stupid. What I AM going to do is encourage you to choose happiness. Yup, that's right, you get choose. I like to think that I am a pretty joyful person, but I will be the first to admit that some days are better than others. Sometimes life just sucks for no reason and it takes a lot to get out of bed and put on decent clothes and actually smile at people. But you can choose to do those things, or you can choose to just lay there, play the victim, and let life beat you down.. It's okay to be sad and frustrated sometimes, but no one wants to be that way forever! Even in the most hopeless of situations, you are never totally helpless. You can choose to be joyful or you can choose to be a grouch. I've seen people who are dying of cancer who are happier than perfectly healthy people who have everything going their way. Being happy is about a lot more than everything "going right", it's about choosing to not dwell on the things going wrong. Whether you realize it or not, your daily choice regarding happiness affects every person you come in contact with. You have the power to be sunshine in someone's day orrrrrr a rain cloud. I don't know about you, but I would really love to add sunshine to someone's day. It can be really hard to choose happiness on a daily basis, because sometimes we just like sitting in our rooms pouting about how unfair life is... but in the long run, I promise you that you'll be happier when you consciously welcome joy into your daily life (imagine that, haha!).

Sure, there's a lot of bad things in this world, but there is also an awful lot to be happy about. Liiiiike, Jesus loves you and I love you and you look great today and puppies are cute and snow is beautiful and cookies and comfy sweaters and just how GREAT you are. I pray that you choose happiness today and tomorrow and everyday, even when life hands you something not so great. I hope you laugh more than usual today and I challenge you to find the little things to smile about. And to my fellow college students, as important as your finals are right now, your sanity is more important, so don't forget to be happy this week. Be His!