Relationship Challenge: Unreasonable Happiness

by Les Palmer, Celebrate Recovery

I have come to realize that for most of my life I chased after “unreasonable happiness.”  I also wondered how many others have done the same.  Perhaps much of the dissatisfaction we seem to have with our jobs or our marriages or how our children behave has to do with our perception of happiness. How many of us can even offer up a cogent definition of happiness, yet it is easy to find much to complain about.  It is well proven that frustration lies in the gap between expectations and reality. Frustration over time leads to resentment which then gives birth to a sense of entitlement.  A sense of entitlement always, always, always leads to less than desirable outcomes.  The thinking is: I deserve to indulge in myself whether it is shopping, drugs, porn, affairs, food or pick your poison because of whatever lies in the gap.   One of the greatest “mini ah ahs” I had was when I read the full Serenity Prayer for the first time was the concept of reasonable happiness. Here it is in its fullest:

God, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change...
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen.  Reinhold Niebuhr

Then the words jumped right off the page at me, “reasonably happy in this life.”  If we don’t put a qualifier on happiness then our search is just an endless line of frustration and feelings of failure.  The house is not big enough, my boss does not value me, my car is too old and so on.  More importantly, is how we view our relationships with those that are the closest to us.  By placing a qualifier on our happiness it is easier to offer grace to our loved ones. We find ourselves less frustrated with the limitations of others.   In short, we find ourselves more at peace with ourselves.  All it takes is to reset the expectations to one of “reasonably happy.”  

Because we are creatures of habit, resetting expectations are harder than most people think.  In many ways our hang-ups and habits subconsciously direct many of our behaviors.  Come learn how to safely reset some of your expectations that may be robbing you of happiness in your life.  

Celebrate Recovery meets every Thursday night, beginning at 6 p.m. at Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri.