What's Making You Happy Today?

Andy and I have a group of friends from seminary that we covenanted with when we all graduated to get together once a year for continuing education. These yearly gatherings each February are life-giving in so many ways. Catching up with friends, learning from one another, sharing each other’s joys and lifting each other up in sorrow. This group is irreplaceable.

Since quarantine began, we have started doing weekly check-ins as a group. We check in on each other and compare notes about how our states or communities are handling the crisis and what we and our congregations are doing to adapt to stay at home orders.

In the last couple of weeks, we decided to end our conversations with the question, “What’s making you happy today?” inspired by the Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast on NPR. It has been such a wonderful way to end these conversations that are so tied up in the stress and strangeness of our current situation.

Most recently, my answer to this question has been the number of times my little family has been able to sit down together and eat dinner during all of this. No evening meetings and being at home all day has meant that I’ve had the time to get dinner together and on the table before I have a hangry toddler on my hands and that we’ve been able to sit down together to eat it. Robert even gallops over to the table when it’s time for dinner and climbs up into his chair; and it makes my heart so happy. Now, don’t let me fool you. He rarely eats most of what is on the table in front of him, but he’s excited to sit at the table with us; and that’s enough for me for now.

The rest of the group has lifted up tv shows, being able to cook more, virtual game nights with family, etc. The things that make us happy vary from person to person and from week to week, but ending our conversations this way has helped us to look for those things that are making us happy and to cherish them in these strange and unprecedented times.

And so I ask each of you, “What’s making you happy today?”