Where is your happy place? Do you have one? I have many happy places. I love home so my happy place is home. I have happy moments as well. My happiest created moment is…when all three kids are home at Christmas. We are all in our family room with a fire going, Christmas lights twinkling and all other lights off. All of us in our warm-ups with full tummies watching a “funny” movie that makes us laugh hysterically…a moment I seek to create every Christmas.
Seven years ago…I created a new “happy place”. It has become…my all time favorite place…to start every day. When I travel, I miss it so much! When I began creating this space, I didn’t realize it would become my “HAPPY PLACE”. I just knew I needed to change up where I was going to meet with God every day…before this “happy place” my time with God and the place…changed almost daily. Words from a wise friend encouraged me to make a change and create a new space…to make it specific to my likes….maybe a certain chair, quiet place, and to put things in that place that I love……..so I did.
I took a chair out of our guest bedroom…I moved it to a space in our home that I took for myself…I put books all around me. I love books and love to read. I brought in my favorite blanket, my iPod player, a lamp, and a table for holding all of my pens. I even bought a special extension cord that would accommodate all the things I plug in–my laptop, phone, lamp, cd player, Kindle charger, and space heater. I placed pictures of my family and framed scripture and quotes that are visible whenever I look up from my “happy chair”…I also added another chair and a foot rest for visitors who stop for a visit at my “happy place”.
This space has become…not only my happy place, but a place where I long to be…to meet with God. It thrills me when anyone in my family chooses to join me…and just pop in! This place, over the last six years, has so many special memories of God’s voice speaking to me…when I walk into the room now, I feel as if I am on Holy Ground. Unique things have happened here…because I know that God knows my heart….He knows…I am thirsting and hungering for HIM…to hear, to change, to just sit….and enjoy His presence.
Back in my early forties I heard someone speak about this kind of thing and I wondered….is that for real? Is that feeling even possible? The feeling to long to be in that place and stay there? A place that would make me feel like the psalmist in Psalm 42:2, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” Now I have lived it!! It is possible.
Point–It is my heart’s desire…my true desire…to ENCOURAGE anyone who would trust my words and my testimony to DO IT! Create a special place to meet with God daily. A place specific to you! I feel my words are so inadequate to describe what I have actually experienced…so I am trusting the prompting of God as you are reading this to touch you and motivate you to do this…to make your “Happy Place”…the place where you meet your Maker!! The One who holds the “world on its axis”. The One “who knows the number of hairs on your head” (Matthew 10:30). The One who says…”If you seek me you will find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
In finishing this simple post…I would just like to say…my “happy place”…has taken my “happy moments” and multiplied them into the hundreds of thousands even in the midst of some of life’s most adverse storms….I will pray daily that the readers of the Back 9…will take this simple, but MOST POWERFUL ADVICE.
I would love to hear the stories of your created “happy place”. Take the time to give it some time…and witness first hand the supernatural things of God….then email Back 9 your testimonies at sherry.bradshaw@back9ministries.org. I would love to hear from you! Let me know in your email if I have permission, if God leads me, to share your story!!
Blessings for you to create the one “HAPPY PLACE” that can bring happiness in life’s greatest storms. May you know the truth found in Psalm 16:11, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”