instead of pursuing happiness

When I first met the man I would one day marry, I feared I was too young to settle down. There was so much that I had yet not done. He met me at a time in my life when my future stretched grandly in front of me. I had visions of living abroad, learning new languages, traveling the world on a budget, meeting interesting foreigners, and practicing a life of abandon that both honored God and gave me global experiences.

It was still in the early days of the relationship, however, when I wondered if, despite the many unfinished goals on my list, God might be intentionally pairing us. He had put a man in front of me who shared so many of my dreams. Travel and global adventures being a few of them.

In our first years of marriage, he challenged my ideas in the best of ways and took me to places I had never heard of before. We honeymooned on the Cook Islands, got our scuba certificates on the island of Utila (Honduras), served on medical mission teams in rural El Salvador, and in between jobs spent 3 months backpacking through Europe sleeping on trains and in some of the dumpiest hotels imaginable.

That was all before children entered the picture. Something happens to those dreams of wild and unconventional adventures when our families start to grow. We begin to pursue stability and consistency, schedules and routines, dependability and sleep. Mostly we pursue all things related to sleep. Stability is a necessity of survival during the little years.

Last week, my husband and I celebrated 13 years of marriage. I like this photo from our date night out because we look happy. And we are happy... mostly. Happiness doesn't happen on its own though.

In fact, we have spent the majority of the past year in conversations together processing some of the deeper issues of what this life should be all about. We find ourselves in a place with much of that dearly sought stability... with a house, and a big yard, and two cars, and three kids, and a good school, and nice friends, and a Bible-teaching church. This is what it looks like to live the quintessential American dream. We can feel immensely grateful for the blessings of this season in our life, at the same time as we wrestle with that niggling feeling in our hearts that this isn't the end of the story for us. Because never have we been fooled into thinking that pursuing the American dream is what makes "happy".

There was that time in my youth when I saw myself as an adventurous go-getter, but someone much more subdued has emerged out of me in these recent years of raising small children. Anything outside of our routine, that doesn't involve staying at home, with access to my car, and the closet full of entertaining toys for the kids, and the familiarity of my community just sounds really hard to me.

Perhaps it is for this reason that my personal journey this year has been to surrender more. That journey, and my husband's own mid-life "reflection", as we have come to call it, is leading us to let go of some of our so called stability in order to make room for the next thing God might have for us. We are being challenged not to fall into the trap of pursuing the things that deceptively lure us to a place we never intended to end up. Anything other than God that begins to master or motivate us can become a false promise to perceived happiness.

Our trust and hope cannot rest in the pursuit of stability, or the pursuit of empty promises, or even in the pursuit of happiness itself. More accurately, happiness comes as a kind of by-product to the pursuit of God's best. When we are becoming who God uniquely and individually created us to be, fulfilling our purpose in Him, then sometimes along the way we are gifted with that wonderfully warm feeling called "happy". The hard days still exist, but perhaps happiness finds us a little more often when the dreams we are pursuing mostly belong to God.

My husband continues to challenge and stretch my ideas, and he gets the major credit for what we are about to do next. I am not ready to reveal here on this public space quite yet, but keep checking back! Thirteen years into our marriage, another great adventure awaits. In fact, after thirteen years, the adventures just keep getting better... stay tuned for more details!

In the meantime, here are some photos of our past weekend/anniversary/family trip to a place that gives me a glimpse into God's incredible imagination - Yosemite National Park.

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls at peak water flow due to snow melt
- the tallest falls in the United States with a vertical drop of 2425 feet.

love and adventure

Yosemite National Park must be one of my very favorite places on earth.

My childhood was packed with memories in this special place... climbing to the top of Half Dome... getting lost while rafting down the Merced River... staring at the shadow of a bear on my tent while I listened to him eat a pineapple upside down cake inches away from me... spending life-changing weeks at summer camp in Wawona... hiking and walking and bike riding and star gazing and rock climbing... adventure. A God-carved, awe-inspiring glimpse of heaven on earth.

On Valentine's weekend I visited with all the loves of my life. These people have been my Valentines for anywhere between 1 and 13 years!

The littlest loves began the weekend's childhood adventures with a wade in the snow-melt.

It was a uniquely warm February day. Apparently all of California was similarly inspired to visit Yosemite for the special weekend. This translated to parking our car really far away from every destination, which meant a lot of walking. In our family, a lot of walking also means a lot of carrying children. I filled my exercise quota for the week. It led to some necessary ice cream breaks to keep the smiles coming.

We were joined by members of my family for a wonderful weekend all around. All my loves in a lovely place. A set of grandparents and some extra adults around is an excellent idea when traveling anywhere with three young kids.

Annike, my mother, Sommer, my sister, and myself. All of the ladies in the family.

Karsten and my mother on the Wawona covered bridge.

Sommer fishing for the first time with my dad.

keep it simple

This is the first year I can remember that I wasn't excited about getting all of the Christmas decorations out. Something to do with the way that my house already feels so cluttered all the time. On top of all of the toys everywhere, and the other people living in this house who don't seem to be bothered by any of the mess, we added a baby. He came with a baby swing and a bouncy seat and a bassinet and a whole lot of hand-me-down clothes and he added some burp clothes to the arm of every chair in the house. I was dreading the additional Christmas clutter.

The Christmas season can be a struggle because at Christmas there is so much more... more parties, more mail, more shopping, more pressure, more stuff. More of everything except time. Less time. When you add more to an already full life, you just get... overwhelmed. Every year it catches me by surprise.

We tied to keep it simple this year. There are the stockings, and some lights around the windows, and the Christmas tree. It was a good decision to only hang half of our usual ornaments because as it is the ornaments seem to be migrating around my house.

We took a weekend away with the family. Vacations are different with 3 kids to manage and nap schedules to remember, or ignore and pay the consequences for later. But even so, we took a step away from the holiday anxiety. For one weekend I didn't have to think about the presents I still need to buy, the Christmas cards I haven't sent yet, or anything on my holiday to-do list. We had a simple weekend with the kiddos and the snow.

Sometimes less is more.

Yosemite was a genuine winter wonderland. Especially for those of us who live on the central California coast and see no snow. It seemed to me that God just wanted to show off his attention to detail when He created this place.

This little guy slept, and slept, and slept in his cozy stroller.

And once in a while he woke up!

bigger

Christian's cousins from Norway came to California for a visit. They spent some time on the beach, saw the sites, and doted on Annike.



Being from a small country means that they don't have the luxury of being as ethnocentric as we do when we are from the U.S. Even the 13-year-old speaks conversational English because, as they say, no one else is going to learn Norwegian. I always appreciate the chance to glimpse my own life through the eyes of another culture.

One of the observations made over the course of their visit stuck with me. It seemed to them that everything is bigger in America. Our cars are bigger (perhaps we have farther to go?), our portion-sizes at restaurants are bigger (they so courteously did not comment on the fact that this makes our people bigger too, but it is a well-known fact, so I will say it myself), our trees are bigger (we DID take them to see the redwoods), and even our squirrels are bigger (I can't quite figure this one out.) We camped in Yosemite, so of course our "tent" (R.V.) is bigger, our stores are bigger, our milk comes in bigger containers, and even our medium-sized drinks come large. I think you get the picture.


It got me thinking about the values we practice without recognizing. I would never tell someone I believe that bigger is better, yet, I subconsciously live that value. In my mind, it makes sense to me to buy the giant shampoo bottle at Target because I get the most shampoo for my money - but after a while I begin to need a bigger shower to hold that giant shampoo, and a bigger bathroom cabinet to house my collection of super-sized lotions and soaps, and a bigger house for that bigger bathroom. It all begins and ends somewhere.

At the root of this practice of big-ness, is the inability to distinguish the difference between "want" and "need". We sure throw the word "need" around lightly. We need coffee, our cars need to be washed, we need vacations from our vacations... but somehow it all turns into a habit of consumption at large, literally. I expect it will be an on-going life struggle for me. However, I need to welcome the chance to have my views of "normal" challenged.