What will your "state of heart" be in 2013?

2012 is almost behind us, and if I had to pick a theme that sums up what the past year was "about", I would have to say "learning to be content".   One of my very favorite scripture passages is from Philippians, which I I think sums up 2012 for me - a year of growing in my understanding of contentment.

Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have.  I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. Philippians 4: 11

Learning to be content, satisfied, and happy, no matter what, is not always easy.  We have had our financial challenges this year, we've experienced a lot of grief in our church family this year, and I think it is safe to say that we have had more "empty" moments this year than most....  To everything there is a season, and 2012, was definitely a season of needing to be filled and trying to help "fill" others through their own seasons of loss, challenges and times of change.  What I know for sure is that even during the what seemed to be "endless, empty" moments God was there, right by my side.

Contentment doesn't just happen.  It is both a grace and a choice that has to be cultivated and tended to each and every day.  It is not just a state of mind, it is a steady "state of heart"...  A heart filled with gratitude, a heart filled with hope, and a heart filled with patience.  Remembering to be grateful for the small things in life lays the foundation for contentment and wards off the desire to love self-pity, which is the exact opposite of contentment.  Some days, all I could find to be thankful for was that I had hot water to take a shower, a van to drive, and tylenol to take for a headache.  There is always something, and someone, to be thankful for. Give thanks in all things, for this is God's will for you...1Thessalonians 5:18 The key word in this verse is all.  In even the worst situation, we can find something to be thankful for.  Gratitude is the womb in which the seed of contentment attaches itself to, and grows. Contentment relies on our ability to enjoy the continual feast of a merry heart Proverbs 15:15   Contentment needs the oxygen of gratitude in order for it to come alive in us, breathing in and out,  causing us to rise up out of near-death circumstances that we perceive to be "less than perfect".  Contentment is not dependent upon the perfection of anything.  God is content with us, just as we are, and we are certainly less than perfect, but always growing, always moving toward happiness, always making our way toward heaven-on-earth. And we must be content with God, even when we don't understand, or "get" what God is doing, or not doing. If gratitude is the space inside us in which contentment expands, then authentic hope is the soothing water that surrounds contentment and cushions it from outside dangers, enabling it to move freely at will, always protected and nourished.  Proverbs 23:18 reads:  There is surely a future of hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.  Hope is the belief and trust that God is always fighting, on our behalf, for our happiness, and that the desires that God has placed in our heart will be fulfilled in the perfect time.  Hope is the belief that God will not disappoint us.  When we know and trust that we have a future of hope, we can be content with whatever today holds, that all things work together for those who love God....for those who hear the call to have hope no matter what.  Things may not be what we want them to be today, but they will be something better, brighter, and bigger tomorrow, and the next day, the next month and the next year, right into the next life.  Hope trusts in the bigger picture, the larger vision, that only God can see and understand.  Hope leaves behind human logic and clings to a higher logic, the logic of God. Hope trusts that the miracle we need  will come, and it will come just in time.  There is no limit to her hope and never will she fall....1 Cor 13: 7 Hope never puts a limit on what God can do. It never puts boundaries on God's power and might to accomplish what must be accomplished. When we can enter the warm space of gratitude and immerse ourselves in the waters of hope, patience will keep us content to labor until what we've hoped for arrives in our world. 

Patience is sheer grace, the virtue upon which the contented heart beats and forms the lifeblood of true joy in what is in this moment.   Let's face it, the teachers of patience are many.  We must learn to be patient with our parents, our children, our co-workers, our check-out lines, our church leaders, our country's leaders, our religion, our doctors, our lawyers, our spouses, our friends, our God, and life.  Patience resists nothing. Patience doesn't feel lack or the pressure of man-made time. Patience is the gift of allowing... allowing the high and low tides of life to move in and out at will.  The patient person is the person who knows how to wait with a smile for things to work out in their own time and their own God-driven way.  Patience expands love and compassion and impatience contracts our hearts and blocks the love, the happiness, the "very best dream" that God wants to hand to us.  Impatience wants everything "now"  Patience knows that "now" is already here.  "Now is when we are at our happiest, not in the future when what we've waited for has arrived.  Patience knows that man-made time is strictly of this world and only trusts in God's eternal time, the eternal now.  My people, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.  But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.  James 1: 2-4.  Patience doesn't believe in lack, time restraints, or that everyone should do as I do, believe as I believe or act as I would act.  This kind of patience is what keeps us content when hard times find us.  Patience declares that God doesn't have to do as I would do, believe what I believe or act as I would act.  Patience recognizes, and keeps in perspective, that I am one person out of billions on this planet. The space that my life occupies in this world is so tiny.  My experience of hardship isn't the only experience of hardship.  My experience of being blessed isn't the only experience of being blessed. No one in this world has to be "my kind of perfect".  Patience espouses the fact that it isn't about me, it is about all of us, all of the time, all over the world. Patience willingly sets aside my expectations and weds itself only to Loving everyone, everywhere, all the time, in this moment.  The patient mind is the mind filled with God.  A mind filled with God is always hopeful, grateful, and peaceful.  A mind filled with gratitude, hope and patience is forever content.  All anyone can do is to try and love someone moment by moment.  In this lies genuine contentment. 

My favorite moments of contentment in 2012: Listening to my husband whisper, I love you, hearing my children laugh uncontrollably, holding two books that I have written in my hands,  hearing a friend's voice on the phone when I needed it most, my husband rushing home to hold me after hearing our world lost such a large group of children in an elementary school in Newtown, CT.,  being able to give two plates of food to a homeless person on Christmas Eve,  listening to my son read to me every night, praying with my children and my husband every morning before school, watching my husband heal after foot surgery and seeing him walk pain-free, watching people stand in line for hours to vote, the privilege of  reading to a friend late at night while she lay dying from cancer,  comforting my children after a bad dream, kissing my husband after a long day of work, meeting another former nun and listening to her experience of healing and hope, continually hearing God say I love you.  I am here.  I will help you.  

I am praying for a contented world in 2013.  I am praying for all of my reader's contentedness. I am grateful for all of the many moments of sheer contentment in 2012 and I cling to a future bathed in the waters of hope, a future saturated with thanksgiving, and a future flooded with realized dreams, brought to fruition through the grace of patience...with each other, with life, and with God.  For God knows the plans he has for us in 2013...plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 

Please, God, remove the desperation from our world,

and grow perfectly contented  hearts everywhere.

                                        Keep us patient with everyone, especially myself                                   when everything feels wrong.

Shield us from self-pity, lack, and negativity.

Keep us hopeful when darkness appears.

Keep us grateful moment by moment, God.

Prosper us even as we wait and dream.

Dissolve our need to have everything now.

Keep us in a state of pure contentment, God, during our trials and tribulations,
our needing and our having, our losses and our gains,
our joys and our tears.

Keep us happy all the time, God,  no matter what.  Amen.

Reflect On Your Life

May the God of your hope so fill you with all joy and peace in believing that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound and be overflowing with hope.  Roman 15: 13

1.  What is blocking your natural state of contentment at this time?  

2.  In what or whom does your hope depend upon?  

3.  What keeps you grateful?  How do you guard your heart from self-pity?  

4.  What is the thing, the situation, or the time where your patience is tested and grown the most?

5. In all of the problems you face, what are you grateful for amidst the problems you experience?