Happiness is...Feeling Home

Mike and I had just talked to his brother and then my sister on SKYPE. Sabores (it means “flavors”), the nearby ice cream parlor, recently got high speed internet, which makes a long distance computer call only a chocolate covered “monkey” banana away (only 60 cents and a five minute stroll), rather than a mile walk. The restaurant had closed at 8:00, but they kindly leave the internet on and a bench outside until they finish cleaning up for the night. It was beginning to get a little chilly so, I decided to head home while Mike finished talking to his mom. As I turned to leave, it hit me. Happiness! For perhaps the first time, just being here felt like fun…felt like home. The glow from the stars and street lights felt warm and friendly as I walked back to our house.

This morning as I followed the same road to drop off trash for pickup, I decided that today is the first day of spring…not just for Monteverde, but for my heart. Outside, the air is warm and fragrant, the sky a bright cloudless blue. The strong wind we’ve had for weeks is a whispering breeze, and bird and bug voices delight my ears with their cheery abundance.

It has taken almost seven months to get to this point where our little neighborhood in Costa Rica feels like home…not just a place to stay while we are away from home for a year. I think “the winter of discontent” is behind me.

I was ill for most of November and December, so I spent a lot of time at home. I missed the little comforts I might normally enjoy if not feeling well in the U.S.—long hot baths, “soul” food…the neighborhood grocery store didn’t even have Kleenex. Whenever the slightest thing went wrong, I found myself mentally sighing (or sometimes silently screaming), “I want to go home.” During one of my many praying/thinking times, it suddenly hit me that I was using this phrase like a swear word. I might just as well have been saying the “F-word” to life. So I decided to stop. I didn’t really want to go home. Gratefully it didn’t take long to remove the words from my vocabulary, and it really began to make a difference in how I felt about our time here.

Actually, even though I was under the weather, the holidays were quite pleasant. We had a couple of students over for Thanksgiving dinner and shared platefuls of food with several other people. We even found a turkey for the meat eaters. Mike and Heidi unexpectedly found a lovely Christmas tree in town the next day and carried it a mile uphill. Heidi cut out paper snowflakes galore to hang from our ceiling and even strung popcorn for the tree. We had a mid-December trip to the beach. And even though we weren’t all together for Christmas itself (Mike and Lincoln were in St. Louis), it wasn’t a lonely time. Heidi’s friend Blair and her family arrived for a week in Costa Rica on December 25th, and she and I had a nice visit with them.

In early January, Heidi and I spent four nights in Granada, Nicaragua. (Costa Rica requires tourists to leave the country every 90 days for at least 72 hours.) Here, I was once again reminded that happiness isn’t found in possessions or comfort. We spent a day touring regional sights and enjoyed talking at lunch with our guide. A few years ago, he had returned to Granada from the United States where he was working construction, to an income in Granada of only $175 a month, because he didn’t like working 70 hours a week just to buy things that didn’t really make him happy.

As with our fall trip to Nicaragua, we saw people living in sheds that in the US wouldn’t be considered worthy lodging for a lawnmower. I saw a “sister” washing laundry in a cistern. No one (not even our hotel) has hot showers. But people seemed happy.

Riding the bus back to Monteverde, it occurred to me that, if we didn’t have family to think about and had a way to generate income, I’d consider starting a new life in Monteverde. We definitely aren’t going to stay in Costa Rica (I’ve since bought plane tickets to St. Louis for early June), but considering Monteverde to have “home” potential was a BIG step for me. In fact, I referred to our return trip to Monteverde as “going home.”

January was also a prayer-filled time. I began thinking a lot about what it meant for the kingdom of heaven to be within and at hand. But I still found myself searching for happiness. My “Happiness is…” Facebook status postings the past week and a half, have been as much about seeking happiness as celebrating it. I’d written them because I was feeling a bit down and know that seeking and being grateful for the good in our lives helps us feel God’s presence. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised last night to feel a spark of true simple happiness, but I was. I was equally delighted to feel it walking down our lane again this morning. And I think, that for the most part, the feeling, like the lovely weather outside, is here to stay.

Happiness is…here, at hand, within. It is feeling God’s gentle, tender care…feeling home.