Come On Get Happy

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that some of you who read this blog are old enough to remember "The Partridge Family" television show. Some of you, however, are thinking ... the Partridge what??? When I was a kid, I fell in love with that show ... and with David Cassidy, as did most girls my age. My niece and I even pretended to be members of the famous family as we sang along at the top of our lungs to their latest record (for those of you who are still wondering why a TV show about a family of partridges was ever a hit, a record was what we played on a record player to listen to music long before the advent of CDs or iPods).

The show opened each week with its theme song, "Come On Get Happy," accompanied by a montage of footage of the family, including, of course, shots of their renovated, multicolored school bus which was their means of transportation to their various musical events. Looking back, I realize that the show was sort of before its time in many ways, especially because the mother, portrayed by Shirley Jones, was a single mom raising five children on her own. The interaction and situations that were depicted on the show often dealt with issues that at the time were quite controversial and cutting edge.

Now I'm sure you are perplexed as to why I'm writing about a TV show that was popular so many years ago, but those of you who are regular readers of this blog should know by now that I eventually get around to making some sort of analogy related to the seemingly meaningless story I begin with. All day, I've been thinking about the theme song for "The Partridge Family," and all day, I've been wishing that getting happy was as easy as singing a song or hopping on an old crazily painted school bus and hitting the road. The truth is that sometimes life blindsides us, and no matter how many songs we sing or how many places we go, we simply can't get happy.

I think that most of us instinctively want to fix ourselves when things in our life are out of whack, to find our happy when we are sad. As much as it's true that there are times when life is just plain old hard, when the path before us looks steeper than Mt. Everest, when the water is dark and swirling around us, it is even more true that it's in those tough places that we should trust God the most. And perhaps those times ... times of sadness, times of fear, times of pain ... perhaps those are the times when we should rest in and wait upon the Lord to bring us through to the other side.

In the words of the great philosopher Winnie the Pooh ... "Rivers know this: There is no hurry. We shall get there some day."