By Edward C. Lee

If you are happy and you know it then your marriage will surely show it. It is funny how the light and silly things of life seem to provide the deepest moments of enlightenment. This morning I was at my son’s swimming lesson, jumping around in the pool with about 10, 3-year-olds singing, “If Your Happy and You Know It,” when suddenly the realization and joy of being a carefree kid became this tangible, even enviable, missing quality of life.

Do you remember being a kid and thinking that being happy was a God given right? As we have gotten older, and more and more responsibilities have come our way, we just have so much “stuff” on us, that for many, all the “happy” has been pressed out of us. Life and marriage can become so serious for me that I sometimes forget to enjoy my life.

Don’t get me wrong, sacrificing and working hard for my people is what I am called to do, and it is a true joy to provide and take care of my family, but I can not be one of those fathers that is early to the grave because they don’t take care of themselves and enjoy life.

I was reading a passage in the Bible the other day (Ecclesiastes 9) that really just schooled me about being happy in life. It talks about the futility of life – that both the wicked and the righteous will die. So the encouragement was to enjoy life with your spouse (specifically – wife) all of your fleeting days, because that is your reward in life and that we are to live with all of our might because there is no planning or work or anything in the grave.

That to me was deep – live with all of your might and enjoy your life with your spouse while you are alive – because everyone dies. The overall point was that much of what we do and stress over is futile – they break, they get old, moldy or out of style, jobs end, relationships change, and loved ones pass away. So squeeze all the happy out of today because the certainty of my uncertain future is that it will someday end.

Pair that up with being splashed in the face by joyous three-year-olds as you sing a silly childhood song that insists that if you are happy it will show, and suddenly it is time for me to re-evaluate how I am going about how I am pursuing happiness in life. A little heavy, but it has given me a new found peace in marriage and parenthood. There are three primary areas that I am now refocusing on while growing as a Happy Husband:

Perspective. In light of an early grave, what is so serious anyway? Stress and sadness over things we ultimately can not change only serve to assure us of sickness and bitterness of heart. Your spouse, with all that they are or all that they are not – is still a gift from God. Does he or she get on your nerves at times? Probably. However by adopting a perspective to love, support and cherish them, in spite of whatever gets on your nerves is a source of great personal satisfaction. Some kind of weird way, knowing that you are being a good husband or wife regardless of the situation   or how you are treated buys you a sense of peace and happiness that is very empowering.

Do What’cha like. I love to golf. I am not that good at it, but I love it. Over the last few years I have gotten so caught up in being busy that I only golfed once in the last two years. My life will not allow me to get back to golfing three times a week, every week. But I can, I must, sacrifice at least one early morning a week to do what I like. It is a true sacrifice of time – but spending that time doing what I like is worth it and it becomes worth it to my family to have a happy husband and father.

Whatever you like to do, find time, make time, steal the time to do it as often as your life allows. It makes getting a phone call from your child’s school or getting a call from your spouse to tell you that something expensive is broken or in need of repair, that much more manageable.

Quiet Time. Spend at least a few minutes out of the week to just cool out. A big part of me remaining “happy” has to do with getting time to myself to just think. Every once in awhile I need to just get to the local coffee shop (no free plugs here) slip my headphones on and spend five minutes on “vacation.” It is not much, but to me my mini-vacations are as powerful as taking a power nap. In just a few minutes I am ready to face the office or family responsibilities with a sense of peace.

I am a firm believer that if you approach life with inner happiness you gain the upper hand on whatever life throws at you. And the same goes for marriage. When I am happy within myself it becomes easier for me to adjust to whatever is going on and meet it with a level head. In your marriage, determine to adopt a habit of happiness, because if you are happy and you know it then your marriage will surely show it!

So BMWK family, how do you go about finding personal happiness and how does it impact your marriage?

Edward is an Ordained Minister, host of the blog: elevateyourmarriage.com and Author of two first of their kind marriage books, Husbands, Wives, God: Introducing the Marriages of the Bible to Your Marriage and his new book, Husbands, Wives, God – Weekly Devotions: 52 Weeks of Relationship Enriching Devotions. Follow Edward on his blog or on facebook at Husbands, Wives, God.