100 Days Happy

About 100 days ago, I found myself in the dark. The thick cloud of depression consumed my life like a fog, and in July, it had peaked. 

During a particularly hard week, God put the idea of 100 Happy Days on my mind. The goal behind the challenge was to post a picture of something that made you happy, for 100 days. I’d witnessed a couple of friend’s journeys through Instagram months before, and had always been wanting to do it. Yet I’d put it on the back-burner. Surprisingly, it was at Starbucks, filled with the hustle and bustle of people on their morning coffee runs, where I heard the tender whisper, “now is the time.” 

In my thickly clouded, shame faced mind, I had nothing to be happy about. The  first couple days were spent looking for just one thing to be happy about.  On the second day, I was so desperate for a picture, that I ended posting a picture of a dead  butterfly that was on the ground in front of me. Butterflies have always symbolized hope for me. The dead butterfly was a slap in the face, of the hope in my heart that was dead. 

I realize now that the butterfly was Jesus gently nudging me to change. It was Him tenderly telling me, “It doesn’t have to be this way, if you were only to open your eyes.” But I rejected it.  It would take a fire, a consuming fire, to change my heart and cause me to let go of control. By the grace of God, that fire came. In a single week at church camp, God’s healing flood poured over my life like a waterfall. And I decided to open my eyes. 

I decided to open my eyes.

From that moment on, I began to see beauty all around me. Suddenly things did not seem so dark. I took a step and made my journey public, no longer feeling ashamed of what had happened or how I was feeling, and knowing full well that Jesus had took that shame forever. 

During the days that followed, joy penetrated my heart like a dagger. I began to see beauty all around me--the beauty that had indeed always been there....I had just been closing my eyes to it. Suddenly things that had seemed so trivial became the very things that made my heart overflow with joy. 

I saw a movie a couple weeks ago about a revival that turned two rival high school football teams to Jesus. The night before their final championship, the two towns  met for a prayer night. The lights of the stadium had been turned off yet every member of the audience had been provided with a candle. One candle was lit and the flame was passed to the other candles. Slowly but surely, the light of 500 candles were burning bright. Enough light was generated to see people and the field. Surrounding neighbors and businesses called the fire department, convinced that the stadium was on fire. 

Had it been daytime, or had the lights been on, the flames would not have been seen, because we cannot recognize the light in the midst of day. In fact, the more dark it is, the more the light shines and stands out. So while this 100 Happy Days journey may be over, it continues in my heart because I cannot stop seeing the beauty of this world. The beauty shared in a coffee date with a friend; the beauty in the autumn colors of fall; the beauty of sweet laughter. And I am only able to see this beauty before me, because of the dark. 

I think this works in our faith too. The more broken and cracked we are, the more the light of Christ can shine through our lives. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:7). So let’s be the broken people that we are, because in our brokenness, in our darkness, God’s light shines brighter than we know.