How To Be Content

When we moved a few weeks ago, I was extremely anxious.  We had several delays with the closing of our old house due to circumstances beyond everyone's control.  Those delays caused delays in closing on our new house. What was supposed to be an exciting time was extremely stressful.  I walked around with a continual pit in my stomach.

While unpacking a box, I came across a book I'd read years ago called Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow.  Oh, what good medicine this book has been this month as I've been re-reading it. Dillow has lived in Europe, China, and now in Colorado, working in international ministry with her husband.  While she offers wisdom on contentment and letting go of anxieties, she also writes profiles of some of the extraordinary women she has met around the world. Each time, she is faced with how much she has and often how little the other woman has; she is confronted by how easy it is to complain when you have been given much, and how her friends that have been given little do not complain.  She reminds us of what it means to have an eternal perspective instead of a worldly perspective:

"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it 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 everything through him who gives me strength" (Philippians 4:11-13).

One particular "prescription for contentment" she recorded was especially powerful.  She told of a woman who had been a missionary with the pygmies in Africa for 52 years.  Along with her husband and kids, she endured temperatures over 120 degrees with no AC or electricity.  Her daughter wondered how she didn't complain, and later found these words in her diary:

• "Never allow yourself to complain about anything--not even the weather.
• Never picture yourself in any other circumstances 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." (Dillow, 11-12).

Hmmm...seems to me that this list might cut down a lot of our conversation topics--the comparing, the complaining, the future.  But I love how this list leaves gobs of time for gratitude. And contentment.