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Happily Ever After


My roommates left for Thanksgiving. It meant I got to spend time working on some research papers I’ve been putting off. Be impressed, I actually made progress.

The first night was pretty lame though. I did absolutely nothing to further my homework goals. I did, however, make a delicious dinner and have too much dessert. I then spent some quality time with Facebook and music. Lots and lots of music.

Before I turned off the tunes for the night, a chorus echoed through my room:

“Who’d like to know, I’d like to know.
Author of the moment, can you tell me, do I end up, do I end up happy?

Do I? Not going to lie, it was a pretty lonely evening. Not having the roommates around to catch my thoughts and throw them back.

Do I have to know how things end up? I would really like to know.

Most days.

Then again, this mystery has created some magic that my knowledge would have destroyed. In general, I like to know things: how things work, where something goes, what a word means, how someone feels, what they’re thinking, the things that make them tick. Everything. I just want to know.

Maybe it’s an evil genius thing. If I know I can control it and rule the world. Or at least know how to react.

Okay, so I’m just really insecure.

I would love a princess fairy tale – assuming I am the princess and not another side/evil character. I know life does not work that way – I’ve not been promised a castle. My mansion comes on the other side of death. Therefore I try to amass as much knowledge as I can to protect myself from whatever is coming. Because I don’t actually know what’s coming.

I don’t know how to respond most of the time.

I don’t know when the right time to ask is.

I’m never sure if I should go with my feelings or my reasoning.

I definitely don’t have a clue what anyone else is going to do.

So the chords bounce through my head – Do I end up happy?

And the answer I got today is who cares.

Happiness is cheap. Why would I strive for something so fleeting? I get joy. Everyday all the time. I have the privilege of living my life actively to give God glory. Everything I go through in this life is molding me to be more like him.

What is anything I go through in my twenties, thirties, forties, beyond, compared to the fifty trillion years and beyond I will be spending in perfection with Perfection Himself?

Nothing.

What I learn here is a shadow of what is there. What I know here is to make me more fit to live there.

If only I can remember to forget my own interests in favor of heaven’s as I continue in my desire to know…

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