Happy Babbling

The difference between fleeting Happiness and Joy is in how we intimately profess and live out our longing and love for God. 

“Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding Joy…” – Psalm 43:4

Two days ago, my Area Head and Events head for this upcoming RYC called to ask me to share on the basis of one characteristic: Joy. “Ellish, you’ve been so joyful”, she simply said. To this, I say… Praise God. It’s true! For the past year since Almighty 2012, I’ve been experiencing Joy like a Child. Unbridled, and completely free. It’s almost euphoric. It’s almost annoying. It’s like permanent “happiness vomit” waiting to splatter on the poor, unprepared, sometimes “emo” or jaded bystanders and friends I encounter in conversation. In those moments, I always pray: “Lord, am I just Happy Babbling? Please… Root me. Draw me back.”

And He does. When needed, God draws us back to key times in our Journey where we experience Longing for happiness. It’s like that expression in Justin Timberlake’s song “Mirrors”: “the vacancy that sat in my heart”. They may take shape in “Great” Sadness Stories (ie: BIG trials, BIG life changing events like… Death). But we need not go through ultimate crap events to experience this Longing. We can experience this Longing in our every day emoness. As such, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us sift through this emoness to leads us to 100% awareness that first there is an Ultimate Longing. Second, that longing is for the ultimate source of happiness.

Longing is normal, and it sits in our hearts for a greater purpose… Other than make us look miserable to the world! “The desire [for happiness] is of divine origin. God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it.” (CCC 1718) Reflect. You’ll see. Justin Timberlake sings “the vacancy that sat in my heart/ is a space that now You hold.” That vacancy, space, Longing for happiness is for something supernatural, divine… For more of God in our lives. We long for God. 

The difference between being a Happy Babbling Witness of Christ (“sounding of a clanging brass or a clanging cymbal” – 1 Corinthians 13:1) and one in a true state of Joy is Peter’s response to the Lord’s question in yesterday’s Gospel. Humbly he says “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” (John 21:17) God reminds us that to live in a state of Joy every day, is to whisper with lover-like intimacy to the Him in the quiet Dwelling Place of our hearts “Jesus… I love you. I love you. I love you.” We must ask for the grace (and as such receive the Sacraments regularly) to be Joyful (CCC 1722). We must strive to cultivate lives of interiority by up-keeping our prayer time. Only then can we truly radiate Joy and not Babble but believably proclaim: God, my Beloved, is everything to me. And this why I am Joyful.

“Your Beloved was everything to you, and you to Him.” – Song 2:16