Steal My Sunshine

I am not going to lie, I am really tired of people raining on my parade. I know that its a part of life, but it is so frustrating to me. I think what gets me the most frustrated is the fact that I am not doing anything to them, I'm just living my life, and for some reason it bothers them that I am happy. Ok, I know that the whole perky persona can be annoying, but if that's the case, don't interact with me if you don't have to.
My son is equally perky, and he is an incredibly happy kid. That is an answer to prayer-every night I pray for all of us to be happy and healthy. He finds joy in mundane things, and that laugh of his is so infectious. I love it when he is telling us something that he finds funny, and he can't finish the story because he is laughing so hard. It causes me (and the Big Man as well) to crack up.
One thing that I try to have in my home is a lot of laughter. How can you be miserable if there's an abundance of joy in your house? Actually, for a long bit of time, there wasn't much laughter or joy or bliss in our home. In fact, there was quite a bit of a dark cloud hanging over it. It makes me sad that a good chunk of the Little Man's life was wasted on darkness instead of light.
Like a moth to a flame, Debbie Downers seem to find me wherever I go. It frustrates me, because I want to be happy. I want my family to be happy. Sometimes I question why it seems like there is a consistent attempt for people to out and out bring me down. The more I focus on being happy, the more it seems these people come out of the woodwork. I look for the positive (one of my favorite things to say is "Every time God closes a door, he opens a window")in everything. Sometimes its through tears, other times I spend a lot of time on my knees, trying to find the purpose of it all. Everyone has bad things that happen to them from time to time, its how you handle it that defines you. I won't give you the litany of misery I've encountered in life, because all of it happened in the past and I can't change any of it. But, each and every event-large and small-has made me who I am today. Something as seemingly insignificant as an off handed comment made by a high school English teacher truly changed my life. I had written a flash fiction piece, and it was a story on how plans can change seemingly in an instant. So, I had to read it aloud in class, and when I was done, the teacher asked, "Are you bitter?" He was kind of a jerk, and thought that he was really funny. I was really proud of the piece, and it actually was published in our school's literary magazine-and got great feedback from my peers, but that really didn't matter at the time. It really made me stop writing for a long time. I let him steal my sunshine.
Another example was being involved with a scrapbook group and doing a swap. The same person was behind the same comments, but it hurt like crazy at the time. There was a swap for Christmas carols, and I worked really hard on mine. Apparently, she did not like mine, because it wasn't full of doo-dads and all that junk-it was plain, simple and done. In front of the whole group she stood there, holding my little piece up and belittled it and humiliated me. Then she was my secret santa buddy and she ripped me apart for the gift I got her-that it wasn't good enough. I found out years later that she was like that to everyone, not just me. She obviously had some deep seated issues and tried to make everyone else as miserable as she was. But, for a long time I let that get to me (nothing like having a Christmas party ruined for you) and I didn't really scrap. I let her steal my sunshine.
But, both of those experiences have taught me valuable lessons. Its not what happens in my life, its how I react to it. Do I let it get me down or do I just carry on? How can my 3 core values (joy, peace and serenity) affect this situation? Do I let it steal my sunshine? Or do I just give it up to God, and let Him sort it out?