Happy women understand that no matter what they own, they will always feel a bit insecure about having enough and being enough, but they don’t let these feelings rule their lives.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 234
And so God must, from time to time, and sometimes very insistently, disrupt our lives so that we release our grasping of life here and now. Usually through pain. God is asking us to let go of the things we love and have given our hearts to, so that we can give our hearts even more fully to him. He thwarts us in our attempts to make life work so that our efforts fail, and we must face the fact that we don’t really look to God for life. Our first reaction is usually to get angry with him, which only serves to make the point. Don’t you hear people say, “Why did God let this happen?” far more than you hear them say, “Why aren’t I more fully given over to God?”
We see God as a means to an end rather than the end itself. God as the assistant to our life versus God as our life. We don’t see the process of our life as coming to the place where we are fully his and he is our all. And so we are surprised by the course of events.
It’s not that God doesn’t want us to be happy. He does. It’s just that he knows that until we are holy, we cannot really be happy. . . .
We are so committed to arranging for a happy little life that God has to thwart us to bring us back to himself. . . .
Now, I am not suggesting that God causes all the pain in our lives. . . . But pain does come, and what will we do with it? What does it reveal? What might God be up to? How might he redeem our pain? those are questions worth asking.
Don’t waste your pain.
— John Eldredge, Walking with God, p. 87-88
Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase “happily ever after.” Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational woman to set her straight.
— Princess Ben, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Happy women know that they can have meaningful, fulfilling, and happy lives regardless of life’s circumstances.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 233
The good news is that as we connect to our positive intention, we begin to find forgiveness. Forgiveness is the compassion we experience as we remind ourselves that by driving a car — having a relationship — we run the risk of a breakdown. Forgiveness is the power we get as we assert that we have a deep well of resilience to draw upon. Forgiveness is the grace that helps us remember to look around while we’re on the side of the road and appreciate our beautiful surroundings and the people we love. To help forgiveness emerge, we can learn to see ourselves from the point of view of our positive intention, not primarily as a wounded or rejected lover.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 190
Indeed, if we will listen, a Sacred Romance calls to us through our heart every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We’ve heard it in our favorite music, sensed it at the birth of our first child, been drawn to it while watching the shimmer of a sunset on the ocean. The Romance is even present in times of great personal suffering: the illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a friend. Something calls to us through experiences like these and rouses an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, and adventure.
— John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, p. 6-7
Happy women know that no one gets to be happy all the time.
There’s no getting around it. If you love, you will lose. But that doesn’t mean being sentenced to a life of unhappiness. Be patient, take the time you need, and allow the grief to help you discover new independence and a fresh outlook on things.
There is tremendous wisdom that is accumulated after loss. Healing takes place when we can turn our pain into something meaningful. . . . Take time to do things that will bring renewed meaning to your life.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 173
When a relationship is over, it stings, and it’s frightening because you don’t know what lies ahead. The good news is that what happens from there on is up to you. If you want to be happy, let go of the belief that you are nothing without him and take on the attitude that you are and can be what you choose to be without him. In fact, let’s just leave him out of the sentence altogether. Now it reads: You are and can be what you choose to be. So choose to be independent. Choose to be strong. Choose to be happy.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 127
Happiness is not found in pleasing others at the expense of self. It is not doing what others think you should do. Happiness comes when you do what pleases you for the sake of pleasing yourself. Think about this for a moment: No one could quibble that Mother Teresa was one of the most altruistic people of the 20th century. She didn’t have to do what she was doing. She did it because it pleased her. From my observation, she found profound personal pleasure in caring for others and serving God.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 84
If you keep in mind that happiness depends more on your state of mind than it does on your bank statement, you will understand that there can be only one tool to free you from the money trap:Â Appreciate and focus on what you have and don’t lament what you don’t have.
If you focus on what you don’t have, you’re going to be miserable. And that will happen again and again, because guaranteed, there will always be someone who has more than you do. If you look instead at what you do have, and I mean across the board, not simply the house and the car — if you look at your relationships and anything else that is meaningful to you, you cannot help but embrace and celebrate life for what it is. . . .
In the end, happy women know it’s not the woman who dies with the most pairs of shoes who garners the prize; it’s the one who has had the most fun dancing in them who is truly the winner.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 60-61