Fighting for Happiness

I've really been enjoying this book I've been reading this summer (yes, I pour through books rather slowly when I want to savor and enjoy them).  It's a memoir of travel, self-discovery, and spiritual formation, and realizing how much bigger God and the world are than our own problems.  I'm getting close to the end, and was encouraged by this passage:

"...people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough.  But that's not how happiness works.  Happiness is the consequence of personal effort.  You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.  You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.  And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever...  It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."

Now, from a Jesus follower's perspective, I read this and am reminded of the passage in Phillippians which says:

"...I know what is is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do all this through him who gives me strength."  ~Phillippians 4: 11-13

That last line is one of the first verses in the Bible I clung to as a young girl of 13 when I was first introduced to the word of God.  It's what I clung to when I labored my dead son for 10 unimaginable hours in the hospital that night, and it's what I cling to now as I fight for my life, my marriage, my contentment, my - dare I say it - HAPPINESS.  

Selah.