I hate waking up. Not in a suicidal sort of way, but definitley in a sleep is sweet and I don't want it to be over sort of way. I like being a wake once I wake up, but waking up itself is pretty lousy if you ask me. So you can imagine my surprise this morning when, awakened by the cold feet of a two and half year old as she climed onto my side for a little horsey ride, I found myself laughing and enjoying this particular waking up process.

I decided to ride this unexpected wave of happiness as long as I could, so i woke up and made some breakfast for me and the fam. Still happy. Next came coffee and a little TV; still enjoying the day.

Ok, this was starting to get weird.

I try as often as I can to start my morning talking to God. I am yet to hear Him speak in an audible voice, but I try to make sure to set aside time to listen just in case he decides to. Today, I started the conversation by telling Him how glad I was to be happy today. Then an unwanted, but way too familiar emotion swept over me. Guilt. What was he doing here? I tried to investigate and started checking into all the old familiar guilt traps. But none of them seemed to fit. I had had a few victories over flesh in the last couple of days, I had already done some study that morning, I had been patient with my fam, even when Abby was jamming her fingers into my open and still very tender "boo-boo" (I fell out of an attic and don't really care to talk about it), so I had to dig deeper to see what was causing this guilt. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I felt guilty for feeling happy. Why should I be happy with life? After all, I am self professed wicked sinner, and surely God sees all my short commings. I just know that He is up there grading life, and I am failing, and like barely, either. I was never happy when I was failing a class in high school, so I surely couldn't be happy while failing life. Something was wrong. I had to stop being happy, and I had to stop immediately. Enough is enough. God must be ticked off with me by now. I could rattle off thousands of rules of Christianity that I wasn't good at.

But then the absurdity of what I was saying struck me. I was taken back to something I had read a few days earlier. Donald Miller in his book, "Searching for God Knows What" says, "I began to wonder if becoming a Christian did not work more like falling in love than agreeing with a list of true principles." Why did I come to that passage? Why not something on hell fire or damnation? Those were what I deserved. Man, I'm wretched.

But them God reminded me of another book written by Him, and the dots were connected. In part of His book were he writes to another group of imperfect people in a church in a city called Corinth, He uses a fallen, sinful, wretched guy named Paul (one of my heroes by the way) to explain to them that love "is patient and kind... and keeps no record of wrongs."

Wow. Maybe the problem wasn't that God couldn't or didn't love me, as I had long expected, but rather that I didn't love my self. I know the scriptures talks about a sea of forgetfullness and forgivenss with cleansing from all unrighteousness... and now this part about love...

God really keeps no record of wrongs for those of us in relationship with His Son. He can't. He tells us He loves us (for God so loved the world, etc. etc.). I am the problem. I focus on my falleness. He wants to forgive and forget all the horrible things I've done, and I keep reminding Him because for some weird reason guilt makes me feel like I am on the right path. So what am I to do?

Embrace the happiness. Accept that this is a journey, not a destination. Realize that as Paul also writes, I have not layed a hold of it, but I can press on to attain the prize. Delight when, through God's strength and molding, I win a few battles. When I loose a battle, tell Him about it, develop a game plan for winning next time, then be happy again because my Adviser has already won the war.

I am going to go back to my day now, and chances are that I will still hate waking up. But when i do, I'm going to make every attempt to find God's happiness in and with the world, and then see if I can't let that shape my own. See, Miller continues, "Can you imagine something like that, what it must feel like in the soul to have God's glory shinning through you? With that much glory, that much of God shinning through you, you would never have a self-defeating or other-person-bashing thought again." I have to admit that I don't know what that's like, but I'd sure like to find out. Here's hoping.