Learn? Choose? Learn to Choose???

I drove home yesterday, chewing on questions, thoughts spinning in my head. A query birthed after an e-mail conversation with a best friend.

She had made a comment about learning to be content.

Most would simply pass over this comment, but not this blessed so and so. I am border line if not all the way obsessed with the idea of contentment. I have yet to figure out why this is.

I love the word. Content. I love it more then happy, joy and even peace.

Content.

My initial response to her, was a question, do you think you can learn to be content or do you just choose to do so?

Her answer was clever and witty as per usual; I think you learn to choose to be content.

…………………..

Do you?

For my half an hour commute I contemplated this thought. I mentally ran through the times in my life when I haven’t felt content. I had a rough patch a while back. I questioned my entire life; I hated my house, was often angry at Hubby, resented the girls so on and so forth. In a conversation with my sister something was said that immediately shifted my focus. I realized that nothing had changed, the life I once loved was the same I just didn’t love it anymore. Once I saw this, a new altered positive perspective became my norm. Soon after I was back feeling content, not one circumstance had changed, only my view toward them.

I suppose the conversation with my sister could be seen as a lesson so therefore I learned to be content. I also realize that I was working off a specific point of reference, a place of contentment I had once felt so it was easy to recognize that the problem was me. Not everyone has this point of reference.

Each day I wake I repeat – “This is the day the Lord has made I will rejoice and be glad in it.” I see this as a conscious decision, not a process, not something I work into or learn. I decide of my own free will to rejoice.

Then again I am in a contented place. I am satisfied with my life. It is easy to decide to rejoice when you are in that place.

However, am I in a contented place because I decide each day to rejoice? Has rejoicing become a habit, a way of life, colouring everything with rose glasses???

The bible does speak of learning to be content.

“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.” Philippians 4: 11-13

Then I wonder if the secret of being content isn’t once again just deciding. That it isn’t some long process, we don’t have to struggle, we simply decide that we will be content and move on?

Of course given my beliefs, it didn’t take me long to wander down the path that like ALL good things, contentment does not come from us, it is God given.

Is it God given to some people and not to others? Do we have to struggle and learn some lessons before we get it? Or is it within all of us? Is it lying there and we just need to receive it? Do we receive it by simply deciding to do so?

Does the word “learn” become a hang up? Does the word “learn” imply struggle? Like learning our multiplication tables?

After all the circles of thought and questions I can say today I believe a few things for sure.

Contentment comes from above. God’s heart desire is for us all to be content. There is a secret to being content.

The question I have unanswered is.

Is the state of contentment a process or a simple decision? Something we “figure” out or a yes I will be?????

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