If You’re Happy and You Know It…

Aaaah. If only happiness were so easy. A quick clap of the hands. A stomp of the feet and an “amen”. Wouldn’t life be grand?

However, some days – which seem to stretch into weeks – happiness is more about self control. Controlling the general grumpiness that simmers just below the surface of my wholehearted attempt, albeit meager results, at creating a home, or hotel room, filled with peace and joy.

“Why am I so grumpy?” seems to be the unanswered question I repeatedly ask my patient husband each night.

I mean, really, in the grand scheme of people worldwide, I still have it pretty good. I have a fridge full of food. My husband has a great job he enjoys. I have a beautiful son. We have a roof over our head. To counteract the convection oven outside, we have air conditioning to turn our hotel room to a simulation of the artic. And we have a sweet loving labrador named Francie.

You know. I think I just realized why I’m so grumpy.

We named our dog Francie after a girl on the show Alias. She was a sweet and loyal friend to the main character. It seemed a name fitting for a dog.

SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE OF YOU SEVERAL YEARS BEHIND IN TV!!!!

Francie, on the show, was killed. It was a bit of a sci-fi show, so the evil antagonist was genetically mutated to look like Francie to steal information from the main character.

We called her Fake Francie.

I think our dog, in my mind, has morphed into Fake Francie.

She has literally shed enough hair in our hotel room to reproduce a second dog. Sometimes when I walk around our room, I feel like Pig Pen with a pile of hair at my feet replacing the dust cloud at his. My son is covered in hair. The cleaning people come on Fridays, but I think this week they deemed it hopeless to bother vacuuming our room. It’s as hairy as it was before they arrived.  I think I’ve looked on Craigslist every day in the last three weeks with fingers crossed that I might see this glorious phrase: “WTA CHOCOLATE LAB”.

WTA. Three little letters with so much meaning – WANT TO ADOPT.

Today as I cooked lunch in my matchbox size kitchen, Francie sat underfoot shedding hair and hoping I would just drop a crumb. One little crumb and she would be happy.

And I realized, “Wow. That’s what that lady meant when she talked to Jesus. He called her a dog. All she wanted was one crumb of his kindness and peace and joy and power to transform her family’s life. Then she knew she’d be happy.”

Now that’s something to clap about.