A Work in Progress

This note is coming straight from one work in progress (me) to another (you).

I don't know about you and your mom, but my mom likes to pop impromptu life lessons upon me unawares - like in the car ride to the credit union today. 

Today's words of advice? the 11th commandment.

"Be ye content."

Although, if you know my mom, this is pretty funny, the subject of contentment itself really isn't all that hilarious. It's sobering. and sometimes even painful.

What is contentment?
I'm glad you asked. I actually googled the definition of it and got a slew of synonyms…. Ready?
Contentment. 
Satisfaction. 
Joy. 
Happiness. 
Ease of mind.
Peace.

Yup, that's (in a nutshell) what contentment is.
Being satisfied or conTENT with the CONtents of your life. (notice the pronunciation difference #grammargeek)

Everyone wants that.

Some seemingly "attain" it at certain seasons of their lives.

Others outwardly "obtain" it through one venue or attainment or other.

But few perpetuate it as an ongoing basis or a way of life.

Why is that?

What does it take to be content? To be satisfied? To have ease of mind, happiness of heart, and (to quote an oldie-but-goodie Sunday school song from my childhood) have "the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart (where?) down in my heart to stay"….?

Contentment doesn't come with a job. People who don't have one, want one. People who have one, want to get out of the one they have or exchange it up for another "better" one.

It's not wrapped around a relationship. As I've found over the years, miserable single people translate into miserable married people. And miserably married people sometimes sadly translate into miserable divorced people. And on and on it goes.

It's not a geographical location. An amount of money. The right style of clothing. Or any other substitute that some people use to numb the stark reality of their lives.

It's a choice. A matter of the mind. A decision of the heart. A steadfast fixation on the Creator of your heart and mind.

As my mom used to say when I was growing up, "You can get glad in the same pants you just got mad in." And that's true. Nothing outwardly needs to change for contentment to occur. Simply because this is true: it happens in your heart. your mind. your will. It's who you are (or are not) at the core.

Stop looking around you, putting your life on hold, or waiting for something or someone to make you content. 

This Christmas season, take inventory of yourself and ownership of your heart's attitude. 
You are the only one responsible for your level of contentment.

If it's not up to par today, perhaps, you should start with thanking God for Who He is. Not to mention thanking Him, one by one, for all the things He continually does on your behalf. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Reader's Favorite Posts

"That's Not My Name!"

Hey. Okay. Say, you just meet someone new. What’s the first thing you usually ask them? ….Usually, it goes something like, “Hi, I’m so-and-so. What’s your name?” Their name. You’re usually concerned with a person’s name because it stands for the entirety of their identity. Think of famous people you know, and as soon as you think of their name, you think of something associated with them. The same thing is true for family members, close friends, co-workers, acquaintances, etc. A name holds a lot together, so you can be especially sure that I began to have difficulty when my name and identity began to get mixed up. Before I get ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning. Hello. For those of you that do not know me, my name is Rosemary H Hazard. But for some reason, the hospital got it all confused. To them, I was Rosemary D Hazard. Many times over, I told them, “That’s not my name!” But for some reason, the bracelets, tags, stickers, etc. all said the same old thing. “ Rosema
Read more

For inquiring minds that would like to know… here's our story.

For some of you in my life, you've been asking, praying, and waiting to see something noteworthy happening in my dating life. So have I. Because I don't exactly know where to start, I'll simply begin at the beginning. Jeff and I both went to school together at Trinity Christian Academy here in Jacksonville from kindergarten to twelfth grade. From first grade to sixth grade, we had all the same teachers. Because our last names are so similar alphabetically (Hazard and Hill), we were seemingly ALWAYS sitting next to each other. Seriously. Always. Around. Each. Other. haha… For those of you that know me well or have known me for a long time, you know that God's done quite the work in my life over the years in chipping away some (note: not all) of my childhood sassiness and giving me a sweet spirit in its place. However, for those of you that knew me then, you would readily agree that I was quite the "over-confident little girl" (to quote my daddy).
Read more

The Birth of Hope

The Birth of Hope  And then Hope was born. Hope Elizabeth. February 25, 2017. When she was born, all 95 percentile of her filled in a portion of my heart that I never knew was vacant. As most would agree, the birth of a baby tends to change everything. And for me, everything did change. And not just at the time of birth. Roughly five months after her birth, everything for me began to change again.  At the end of July in 2017, I experienced an mental “episode” that landed me in a mental ward at a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. Later on, I would come to realize that this episode was due to two known factors: the diagnosis of hypothyroidism (my thyroid numbers were off the charts... even my doctor at Mayo Clinic said it wasn’t the highest number he’s seen, but it was pretty close) and symptoms that closely align with what is called postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis occurs roughly in 1 out of 1,000 births, so I doubt anyone that I know reading this would fully underst
Read more