The Secret of Happiness

A Moment

My four nights of night shift were over. Sleep was very much enjoyed. And now I was alone in our flat in Dublin, Ireland, with the dulled sounds of the city suburbs moving around the walls protecting the tiny patch of grass, and my washing on the line, three floors down.

I leaned back into our ratty armchair while lax evening light napped in long squares on the carpet, and let silent tears fall. Truth had come at last.

I’d only wanted to be a nurse because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. An English and languages lover in high school, no career seemed to appeal. All I knew was that I didn’t want to sit in a classroom for another three years, and back in those days in Ireland, a young woman could get a nursing degree and a salary in three years by working and taking eight weeks of classes a year. Deal.

I took off after school to live a little first, settling into Andalusian life with a host family and learning the language as quickly as I could, while providing many laughs as I stumbled over similar words like pollo and polla. I chased boys, organized drinking parties, avoided anything that looked like responsibility, and came back to Ireland ripe as a cocoa bean and ready to be a great nurse.

Only I wasn’t. I couldn’t get my mind around the body parts and chemistry of drugs, couldn’t work quickly, couldn’t look busy doing nothing. The only thing I felt comfortable doing was talking to patients, listening, explaining, understanding. I can’t count how many people I forgot about on the commode, or the women I left stripped to the waist behind flimsy curtains. Or how late I started the observation round. Or how I froze when someone had a heart attack.

Fortunately, student nurses are just that—students, so someone was always ready to rush in and fix my inability to just get it already, do it right already. But it wasn’t just that. I felt completely inadequate as a being. I wasn’t good enough, clever enough, likable enough. I wasn’t enough at all.

And so there I sat in the twilight feeling sorry for myself when truth dropped into my heart almost as audibly as a living voice. Even if I sit here for the rest of my life, I’m still enough.

I knew it was the truth, because my thoughts never sounded like that. My thoughts always criticized. This voice was kind.

After that day, I wasn’t instantly twirled into a perfect woman, like Cinderella before the ball. But I was different, more settled in my skin, and dare I say it, happier. Knowing I was enough made me think about myself less. I was more able to focus on other people—hone in on what they wanted and needed rather than on the things I’d thought I needed to feel safe around them.

I got my degree, stuck it out for another few years, and then I heard that voice again. Almost audible. Completely unexpected. A name. My future husband’s name. We weren’t even dating, barely knew each other actually, and yet I knew. I knew this was the same voice that had told me I was enough, and now it was telling me this man would be enough for me. A tall order.
Wanting to stay home with my babies was a fabulous reason for never going back to nursing again. That was probably one of my greater gifts to humanity.

And then I heard the voice one more time. Louder than a thought. Out of nowhere. Thunk into my soul. We would move to another country, where we would be enough together.

We landed in Austin, Texas, with a three-year-old and a five-month-old, and integrated quickly into a new routine of life. Gone were the days of dropping into a neighbor’s house for tea unannounced. New was getting a driver’s license and having to drive to go anywhere. We grew together; made friends; bought homes; loved, laughed, and cried. Sometimes we shed so many tears that we missed seeing the happy flashes for what they were—sparklers in the yard of life, shooting hope into our dark moments and joy into our lighter ones.

And that voice . . .

Some would call it God, a guide, gut instinct. We don’t have to label everything supernatural we discover outside and inside ourselves. Some things just are. I like to think we are all created with a holding box that is opened by that voice, that presence, and once sprung open, we’re released into all we can be.

We cycled through many small business efforts while finding what made us feel fully alive, and we’ve found our finest happiness comes from moments when we can serve up our best from the fulness within—our special mix of heart and talent and hope. Our family has had so much to celebrate and look back on with joy. We have so much beauty to stop and see and touch in the present.

Yes, sitting in that old chair and hearing that voice say I was enough was one of my happiest moments, but in this season of my life, happiness holds new meaning. Happiness isn’t always about a moment in time I can never recapture. Sometimes it’s about a truth given in a moment that takes root and grows in ways that allow it to be recaptured day after day forever. An infinite truth.