Choosing to Step Out of Default

What will I choose?


Will I choose to be content when

• the daytime temperature hovers between 28 and 33 degrees Celsius and the only summer skirt I own gets caught in the door and tears and I don't know where to buy sewing supplies?
• my bedroom is also a storage space?
• the things we use daily don't have 'homes' and make a visual clutter that is oh, so distracting to the mind?
• I can't find the kinds of things I'm used to cooking with - like tomato sauce and sour cream?
• the dogs in the neighbourhood bark so incessantly that I can't sleep during the night?
• my efforts at learning Spanish are making such slow progress?

None of these things are big. None of them are life-threatening. But each do threaten to destroy my contentment and peace.  I know that none of them compare even closely to the apostle Paul's challenges when he writes in Philippians:  "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances."  (Philippians 4:11)

So I have a choice to make:  Get bogged down by inconveniences or

• be glad that I have a sister who could mail me a patch for my skirt
• thank God for all the good things we have in our home and the way He arranged for us to be in it
• be thankful for the living that happens in our home every day
• appreciate the adventure of new foods and flavours
• use awake-at-night moments (or hours) as time to talk to my Father
• remember how far my ability to communicate has come and for the fact that my mistakes are at least getting more sophisticated

Each day is filled with these choices. And they are decisions that have to be made consciously or they won't be made at all, and, sadly, the default mode is 'discontentment'.

::

(I think it's time for me to get back to regular posting of the Thousand Gifts list. It's too easy to let the habit/discipline of thankfulness slide, to forget to look through the eyes of thanks.  So, regardless of how many gifts I've listed privately in my own writing in the past months, I'm going to pick up my list on PeaceLedge carrying on from the last number recorded here.)