Tickled Pink

I’m sitting at my kitchen table this morning after studying. It’s quiet here and so my thoughts wander to my family, scattered about today.  My daughter is on a 8^th grade field trip today, my son at school participating in field day, my husband at work, and the rest of my immediate family is thousands of miles away in Africa.  In this quiet moment, it sure feels lonely. This takes my thoughts to my studying today.  A question was posed, what have your circumstances taught you?

To me, in a lonely place, to which I have found myself more often than not these past weeks, my circumstances have brought a new light to Philippians 4:11. Paul says “for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”  I know Paul’s situation involved many aspects but I know one of them was loneliness.  Chained in prison, he was longing for word from his beloved Philippian believers and friends.

 If I chose to dwell on my loneliness, and my mind became clouded with such feelings as self-pity or despondency, I could easily miss an opportunity God had for me. It could be in that very moment when this cloud of thoughts overtook me that God had planned an open door, and while wallowing away, I missed it. It could be in those cloudy moments that my child cries out in need for me but I missed it, or my husband needs my listening ears and shoulder to lean upon but I missed it. I saw this today, “to the world you maybe one person, but to one person you may be the world.” In others words when are minds are overtaken by selfish and discontented thoughts we miss opportunities that God has for us, but also opportunities to be there for our families.

We have a choice each day to come against our thoughts of despair, discontentment, and discouragement and choose to think upon the words found in Philippians 4:8. Today I choose thoughts of truth, nobility, purity, loveliness, excellence and praise to the only One who is worthy. If I choose to be content whether in need or want (relating not only to food, clothes or shelter) then I am ever ready for the next chapter God has for me. I am then prepared and ready to step up to the plate when He ask. There will be no missed opportunity when are thoughts are right.

I looked up synonyms for content and my favorite was, “tickled pink.”  You can’t say that out loud and not smile, right? I hope you are tickled pink today.

I look forward to this season passing and stepping into a new one but while here, as hard as it is sometimes, I rest in his peace, draw ever so close to the one who is a friend that never leaves, or forsakes, who gives me strength to press on. 

Choose to be content no matter what this world throws at you today because just around the corner there might be something grand you would have missed.

What have your circumstances taught you? I believe there is a lesson in everything we go through.