Be Like Gigi: Find Your Happy in the Hard

Because sometimes hard seasons and grief don’t have a clear finish line.

For over a decade, my grandma (aka Gigi) cared for my grandpa after his Parkinson’s diagnosis. She managed everything from medication to doctor’s visits to unpredictable, sleepless nights. After Grandpa went to be with Jesus in 2020, Gigi slept for 14 hours a day for seven weeks straight—her sister calling each day to make sure she was still alive. 

Gigi grieved the loss of her husband and an amazing man—and in time, she asked herself what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Deciding she wanted to travel, the trip-planning process sparked a new joy in Gigi. There wasn’t a clear end-date to her grieving—grief never works like that. But she decided to put one foot in front of the other, and welcome happiness, even if some days still feel hard. She took me to Alaska—one of Grandpa’s favorite fishing spots—and made me join her on the world’s tallest zipline. Then she rode a train across Canada and saw the Northern Lights in Iceland (and discovered “I hope you get lucky tonight” means something different over there). Now she’s got a trip planned to Hawaii and Portugal. 

I recently got a message from Gigi saying she’d be in my area for a couple of days because she was buying a camper to take across the country. She pulled up in what looked like an aquarium—a trailer wrapped like a party bus; fittingly, she named it “Happy.” She said, “I know Grandpa is rolling in his grave laughing about this!” Gigi’s taking ‘Happy’ on an epic cross-country adventure, stopping in Waco to see the Silos, the Grand Canyon, the Pioneer Woman’s mercantile, and more. 

During Gigi’s visit, I happened to be preparing for Lisa Harper to be a guest on a podcast I produce, and one of her books is called The Sacrament of Happy. In her book, Lisa put words to what so many of us wonder, “Does God want me to be happy?” Lisa used to think that happiness and holiness were divergent paths. But the more research she did, the more she unveiled the 37 references to “happy” in Old Testament and 48 in the New. To boil it down, happy and holy are not mutually exclusive—and neither are happy and sad. More accurately, they are two sides of the same coin. “Even in laughter the heart may ache…” (Proverbs 14:13)

Lisa says, “Real, God-imbued happiness is not the absence of sadness or badness. Rather, it is hanging on to the truth of His sovereign goodness regardless of what’s going on within or around us.”

If you’re anything like me, I like definitive beginnings and endings—and sometimes hard seasons and grief don’t have a clear finish line. I’ve found myself waiting for permission to close the door on hard and open the door to happy. Here’s the truth: most of the time, there’s no departure or arrival date. You can still miss your old life while working toward loving your new one. Sometimes you find your happy after the hard, but sometimes you learn to find it in the hard. Sometimes the lines between hard and happy blur together and you have to take both sides of the coin. A day when grief pops up doesn’t mean you can’t be happy, and hard days don’t disqualify you from welcoming joy—even if it’s found in the small things.

So, if you’re waiting for permission to allow happiness back in, here it is from Gigi. Go get your Happy.

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Quote:

“Every man, whatsoever his condition, desires to be happy.” St. Augustine

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What I’m Reading 📖

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Fun & Favorites:

• Speaking of trying to be happy—(TMI) all four of us girls in the house are on the same cycle, these help keep our mood level during that time. 🤪

• This made me laugh. 👮‍♀️🎨

• What moms really want for mother’s day—a break. 💐

• This is such a sweet gift idea for a book lover. 📚

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Question to Consider 🧭

What small things make you happy?

Your friend,
Mel