Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Psalm 103:2
As the year is winding down, I’ve been doing some reflecting…
God is so faithful! You could stop reading right there because that’s the heart of what I wanted to share with you today. God is faithful!
But, of course, I’m not going to stop there. I’m a writer, after all, and I sat down to try to write something today. I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit of writing regularly, and this is my meager attempt to rekindle some bit of momentum.
At the beginning of the year, I adopted a word for 2024. That’s not really something I’ve been in the habit of doing. I don’t think everybody need to have a “word of the year” or any such thing. But a particular word had come to mind as I was evaluating life at the end of 2023 going into 2024, and that word was “content.” And so I thought to make that my focus.
It’s a two-fold word, both meanings very applicable to my goals and struggles, and so #content2024 was my plan. As a writer/blogger my goal was to produce more content (noun: the topics or matter treated in a written work). In life, I recognized my need to stop striving and worrying and simply learn to be content (adjective: satisfied).
So how did I do?
Well, In terms of producing content, not so good. I posted to my Susan Becker Writes Facebook page pretty regularly all the way into February. I updated the Invisible Woman blog eleven times. I did not finish writing a single book, though at this moment I have three incomplete works in progress that I really do intend to finish someday.
As for getting more content in life… well, I suppose that will always be a daily struggle. But these past few days, I’ve really just been in awe of what my great God has done this year!
We ended 2023 living in a travel trailer in west Texas. My Christmas tree was about two feet tall, and I remember this time last year chatting (complaining, more accurately) with the Lord about how someday I’d like to have a full-size Christmas tree again. But a bigger Christmas tree would require a house bigger than the roughly 250 square feet we were living in, and I really didn’t see much hope for that happening (which I’m certain I also complained to the Lord about!).
It was surprisingly cold in west Texas, something I hadn’t really understood before we moved there. I mean, I should have known. We’d visited often enough to know that they actually do have winter out there. But it came earlier than I expected, and it was lasting much longer than I would have liked.
But
Getting content meant I had to embrace it all - which was especially challenging when we returned home from a trip in January, and it was FOUR degrees and all our pipes in the trailer were frozen! But I digress.
I had some really sweet times with the Lord early in the year during which I determined to just get happy with what I had. The fifth wheel was absolutely adequate for two people to live in. It was truly a blessing to have a very low lot rent in the economy of 2024, and so I set out to clean up, spruce up, and generally try to find ways to make our little home more comfortable and more functional.
As for west Texas, cold or not, it was home. I had some great people to work with. We were close to family. We were attending a great church.
So I decided to really work on putting in some roots.
I had just signed up to join a ladies' Bible study group when Jeff owned up to the fact that he was looking at jobs back in Florida. Not only was he looking, but he already had an interview lined up.
So many details, emotions, and lots of stuff in between, but I’ll spare you. The point was this: when I stopped striving so hard against where the Lord had put me, He flipped the script on me!
Fast forward to today, and I’m writing to you from the desk in my home in south Florida – from one of my homes in south Florida. One year out from feeling like I would spend the rest of my life in a tiny trailer in some trailer park or another, I’m enjoying life in a townhome community with a pool, a fitness center, and – my favorite – a fancy coffee machine in the clubhouse. I have a real kitchen with a full-size refrigerator, two actual bedrooms, two and a half actual bathrooms – one of which has a bathtub (!!) - and I never have to put chemicals in the toilet or go outside to pull a chute to drain the holding tanks! Unbelievable, right?
But that’s just part of the story.
Several days each week, we get to live in a four bedroom, three bath house with a fenced yard and an even bigger kitchen. And not only that – it has a Jacuzzi tub! It’s one of those little details that reminds me of just how well the Lord knows me and how much He loves me that He would throw in that little luxury for me.
The details are fun, but somewhat irrelevant to the point.
God works on His own timetable and in His own way. And His ways are ALWAYS better than the ideas I described to Him!
So in this Christmas season, it has just been so fun to just bask in the blessings, and sit in awe at what God has done. There are still struggles, to be sure. It’s just a different set of struggles than we had 365 days ago. There always will be struggles this side of heaven, which I think is just a bit of what the Lord has been trying to teach me for so long.
But I really just want to encourage you to seek contentment, whatever circumstance life may have you in at this moment. Life is often hard, but God is always good.
...Just a thought...
