Can we decide to be happy after divorce?  Can we choose to have a wonderful life after a tragedy like divorce?  Can  our time on this earth be fun and productive and adventurous after the devastation of divorce?

Those are questions I asked myself when I was divorced after 33 years of marriage and after spending all that time building a life and a family that was good and strong and happy most of the time.  I worked hard on building a life that would be a launching pad for all of us …. for my wasband’s career and life’s work, for my goals to create a strong base of love, for our children as they embarked on their own lives.  Then, my wasband decided he would rather have something else and I was devastated.

This blog is long, but here’s something that made an impact on me and helped me see that regardless of what external thing happened in my life (and this is something I am still trying to teach my children and grandchildren), that no matter what happens in our life, we can always choose to make our days fun and exciting and filled with purpose. (NO MATTER WHAT!)

Yesterday was Easter, a day of significance for me as a believer in God and a follower of a resurrected Christ.  Don’t stop reading if you’re not of that same mind.  The following is something that a friend shared with me that filled me with excitement regardless of my thinking about God.  I’m not even sure the woman speaking believes in God.  But here is part of her story:

“What a piece of work is man — 50 trillion cells functioning in purposeful harmony.  The two hemispheres of our brain are yoked opposites:  limit-setting rationality (time, judgment, ego) in perpetual interplay with the eternal and unbounded now.  Together, and only together, do these two halves of our awareness make our human destiny.”  Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist.

A friend, who happens to be a painter, sent me an email, with a 20-minute presentation by Jill Taylor, a Harvard-trained scientist who experienced a stroke.  Her story reminds me that this person who is me is a profoundly complex example of eternal energy that has a brain and arms and hands and legs that can be used for good.

Each person is a part of the universe that is the eternal now.  Beyond the physical.  Infinite energy.  And we have been given a way to use that purposeful energy by doing good things with our bodies.  Isn’t that an amazing thought?  We have the choice to use the life energy vibrating within our cells to make things better or to make things worse … for us and for those around us.

I don’t know, when I start thinking about this kind of thing, I can get into, as Jill Bolte Taylor calls it, “la-la-land.”   But when we understand who we really are and what we have available to us as eternal power and energy, it’s more than la-la land.  It’s being “reprogrammed” with a realization that, as this scientist says, we can see beyond the externals and “tend the garden of our mind to maximize our quality of life.  We can consciously influence the neural circuitry underlying what we think, how we feel, and how we react to life’s circumstances.”

Personally, I think that’s what God has been trying to get across to us all along.  By seeking out his eternal, infinite energy and goodness and incorporating that energy into our everyday “walking and talking” lives, we have the chance to not only live on an incredibly higher plane, but we can bring others up to that plane with us by our actions.  God made us as infinite eternal energy, and he gave us bodies and the choice to use that energy for good.  WOW!

How is that unique body that is you using God’s creative energy today?  Are you “tending the garden of your mind to maximize your quality of life”? Think about it.  The implications are mind-blowing!

“Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!  It is amazing to think about.  Your workmanship is marvelous — and how well I know it.”  Psalm 139:14