Do you ever feel like life is on hold?
I hear stories and read blogs about old college friends who are remodeling homes (that they own), and having more babies, and oh yeah, have husbands who are employed.
It’s hard to always remember to remind myself that God has me right where I am, right now, for a specific purpose.
It’s also hard to always remember that He knows what’s best for me and loves me more than I even love myself.
That’s why I have to make the choice to be content. I’m learning that contentment, like faith, is often a choice we have to daily make, rather than a feeling.
That’s why, for my own benefit, I wanted to repost the 5 tenets of contentment that I learned a while back:
- Never allow yourself to compain about anything — not even the weather.
- Never picture yourself in any other circumstance or someplace else.
- Never compare your lot with another’s.
- Never allow yourself to wish this or that had been otherwise.
- Never dwell on tomorrow — remember that tomorrow is God’s, not ours.
These are things I’m going to daily remind myself to do as I wait on God’s timing. As an update, I will say that I’m thoroughly enjoying the family time we are being blessed with as Moondoggie waits on a job offer. He seems to be really close to being offered a dream job and we are trying our best to be patient and hoping that this job is in the Lord’s plan for him.
I’m daily telling myself, that life is not on hold. God has me right here, right now, for a reason. Oh, and did I mention (even though it’s hard to accept sometimes) how thankful I am for that?
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28
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I guess that now is as good a time as any to mention that one of your posts on contentment (quite a while ago) has made a HUGE difference in how I perceive things. I became embarrassed and uncomfortable with how ungrateful I was when my life was actually really great in SO MANY ways. Since reading that post so long ago, a handful of things have happened that I have dealt with much more constructively than I would have otherwise! Me in a nutshell right now: my boyfriend bought a fixer-upper that we’re working on together, he lost his job (and six months later still can’t find a new one), we’ve been together for over 4 years and I still haven’t been proposed to, and I’m working in a job that becomes increasingly farther away from what I wanted it to be! But you know what? I feel happier and more blessed than I have ever felt before. Thank you for this post (which after a long and difficult week has reminded me that I have control over my happiness and contentment!).
Thank you so much for these words! I need to hear them right now. It is so true. I think I break those 5 rules on an hourly basis! I am going to try to apply this to my life right now. I am feeling very much “on hold”.
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Nicole, I love that phrase… “contentment means that life is not on hold.” Very true and well put. I call it not delaying joy. We can choose to be joyful in the Lord each day. Sometimes it is such a hard choice. Sometimes he takes us through a season of grief, but the joy returns in the morning. Thank you for your encouraging words.
Rachel, I know I don’t know you, but my heart just hurt for you. I just wanted to encourage you ask what your boyfriend’s intentions are.
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