I like to think of myself as grateful and not wanting more than the good Lord has given me. There is one thing I falter on though. I dream, kind of obsessively, about homeownership. It runs my mind a lot. I get super excited for my friends when they get to that point. I think, "Ah, someday. Someday it will be my turn." Then I count the many reasons why I love my apartment and community life.
Lately I have been easily sent off to impatient daydreams. I'll see a young lady on a commercial go to her door to pick up her package of pet meds and start wondering how she got a house at such a young age and I get flustered that it isn't my picture. The day dreams used to be accompanied with details and a content feeling that someday it will happen. Now there are no details and there's an anxious feeling that it's so far off, my kids will grow up before we get there. I keep looking for things to comfort my heart on the matter. Elder Uchtdorf gave a talk on patience that really helped...
Here is a list of the things I think to calm down:
"You know the Lord has given you many miraculous blessings, there is always more in store for you."
"You need to be content with where you are and flourish there first."
"Count your many blessings and the anxiety will go away."
"Patience includes being happy on the road to where you're going."
"Think of all the reasons God has put you in this apartment. It is so easy to make and keep good friends and it is easy to do a lot of good for a lot of people. You also have great opportunities to share the gospel here."
-I often distract myself with ^that^ one.
I think about the parallels to high school... you know how teens all think they're ugly and compare themselves to everyone in the room creating a totem pole of sorts in their mind. It's kind of like me right now, putting myself at the bottom of a totem pole just because I don't have a house yet. These things are all so temporary and foolish. I am not less because I have less. Unless, of course, I let myself be less because I think of myself that way. I must seem like a spoiled child, given the richest eternal blessings in family and the gospel and so many temporal miracles, and I'm still so anxious for more. It's amazing how quickly I seem to assimilate and forget the beauty around me and get caught up in have-nots. I guess I'm just having a "green" couple weeks (and not the good kind of green). Really, I think I usually blossom where I'm planted and ignore the "Jones's" with their shiny house.
Writing this has been very therapeutic. I feel a bit of peace now. I know God loves me and He is helping me orchestrate my life; these experiences must be important to shaping my character. I'll just keep trying to become a woman of promise.
Matt 6:24-34
"Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:... Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."
-Mammon has the connotation of being the god of money or temporal things.
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