"...and we might have been happy."

So, imagine that a rather young age, say your teens, your dad came home and said "We're moving." Sure, this happened to a lot of us. So, let's suppose you lived in a society where this was not common, and in fact, you knew as a teenager where you would grow old, on the family property (you had your own area set up already). It was nice, you were well off.

So again, your dad says, "We're moving - get only your basic supplies (clothes, food) and pack it up. Some people want to kill me." You obediently take off from your nice house in the city, leaving all your comforts behind, and start walking into the desert with your parents and three brothers.

You live in the desert for a long while, returning to the city once a few months later to get a heavy brass book that your dad says is important; in fact, he says that God told him to send you to get it. So, you take the long journey back to the city, and ask the man who has the book you need to give it to you.

He says no.

"Okay," you think, "let's try to buy it from him." You go back to your house (the one where you left all your nice things, including riches), and collect your riches to buy the book from him. Again, you ask him for the book, in exchange for your riches. He decides that he likes your stuff, and doesn't want to be parted from the book (which is in his treasury). He orders his guards to kill you. You and your three brothers run for your lives. Skip a few hours - you've gotten the book, and a new friend, who has decided to come live with you in the desert.

Back out into the desert - when you get back, you find out that between the journeying (it was a long walk back to the city, probably weeks) and fenagling to get the book, your mother thought you died.

Some more time passes (between a few months and a few years), and your dad sends you back to the city again - to get a family of beautiful women to come out into the desert with you. No argument there - off you go!

Skip forward a few years - it's been eight years since the day your dad came home and said you were leaving. After living in the desert, trying not to be found by people who would do you harm, getting married, having children in the desert, your father-in-law dying in the desert (made your wife very sad), something really good has happened: you have come to the greenest place you have seen in ages, if ever. There are fruit, delightsome foods, oh - and it's by the sea. How marvelous is this?!

You start to get comfortable, and a few days later, you hear that God has instructed your family to cross the sea.

How do you respond?

Two of the brothers in this story were originally very angry. They said something along these lines: "[Look], thsee many years we have suffered in the wilderness, which time we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance" (remember, they knew where they were going to grow old "yea, and we might have been happy."

Someone in the 1800's decided that sentence ended with a period; I think it must have been an exclamation - perhaps yelled. Laman and Lemuel must have been so daunted at the thought that they didn't get to rest even after all they and their wives had been through. It sounds like they loved their wives, despite every thing else wrong with them.

Why did I post about this?

Life is hard. It varies in difficulty, and in visibility to other of that difficulty. There are easy times, and there are times when your mettle is tested. Those are the times when you can find out what you are made of. Despite great difficulty, you can still be happy during most of those trying times - at least, this is my experience. You see, the sad truth of the matter is that while this was supremely difficult, Laman and Lemuel chose to be unhappy through most of it. Not all the people in the troupe chose as they did though, which indicates that it was possible to be happy - others were.

Be happy - it's a choice.