Joy and Suffering... and Yogurt.

I've been thinking a lot about giving and receiving recently. During the homily at Mass this morning, the priest used the phrase "the Lord loves a joyful giver." Then this article about Stephen Colbert popped into my newsfeed. 

I hope you read it, but if you want me to sum it up quickly, it is about receiving everything in your life - the good and the bad - as a gift from God. Colbert is able to find joy in suffering because he understands that it, too, is given by God.

This made me think about at being at Menchie's Yogurt the other day. (I do enjoy all the yogurt places I am finding in California!) I was having a conversation which turned to the subject of our respective divorces. The person flat-out asked me, "Are you happy that you’re divorced?" My initial reaction was that this was such a strange question. How could I ever be happy that the commitment I made to the man I loved ended in pile of lawyer bills and heartache? But as I enjoyed a scoop of frozen yogurt, I realized that here I was, sitting 2,000 miles from the home I shared with my ex-husband, starting a life I never could've imagined a year ago.

And I flashed back to a day on the Camino that was my one year "anniversary" of being laid off from work. The pilgrim with whom I was walking asked “if that had not happened, would you be on the Camino?” “Definitely not,” I replied. And so he said that maybe it's a good thing that I lost my job.

So, back to the yogurt. I put down my empty cup and found myself saying something I never thought I would. Yes, I'm happy to be divorced. I'll spare the details, but it was a hell of a year I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Yes, now on the other side, I'm pursuing the career I want, knowing that I'm only beholden to myself. I'm living in a city that I feel with certainty was meant to be my new home. Granted, a city I cannot navigate without constant use of the GPS, but my home nonetheless.

Things happen to us in life. Things that we wish never happened. But they happen, all the same. The month I have been in LA has been full of ups and downs, full of joys and sufferings. So I must adopt Colbert’s attitude of loving life without bitterness, of giving and receiving in joy. 

I know that I am exactly where God wants me, so whatever He uses - the good and the bad - to get me to where I need to be in His design for my life, I will embrace. As long as there’s frozen yogurt.