Contentment.

It's a beautiful warm and slightly windy day here in Texas.  This comes as a nice change of scene from the bitter cold and biting wind that we have had here the past few weeks.  As I went about my day from early church this morning, to meetings and ward potluck afterward, I couldn't help but sit back and reflect on how perfectly content and at peace I am at this time in my life.  Not that I am generally not at peace or full of discontent, but for some reason the happiness that I am currently feeling transcends any other type of contentment that I remember feeling recently.  I have felt very happy at other times in my life and for specific events or periods such as excitement for when my favourite sports teams do well (BYU), or the bliss of being in a healthy relationship, but this level of peace and contentment has been harder to capture since I returned home from my mission. 

 

At the very end of my mission we had a testimony meeting with all of the missionaries that would be leaving the mission together.  There was a pretty big group of us that all came into the mission at the same time, and we were probably the biggest group of American missionaries the mission had seen in a long time.  The mission had been shut down to missionaries from the United States because of the Zapatista rebellion that occurred there several years beforehand, and we were some of the first to be allowed back into the region.  The testimony meeting was great and included some of my best friends from the mission for the past few years.  As it came upon me to take my turn to bear my testimony and kind of recap what I had learned from my mission, the one overwhelming thought that I had was that of gratitude for the opportunity to serve, as well as the happiness that I felt being able to have the gospel be such a big part of my life.  It was on my mission that I realized how happy simply living the gospel can make people.  You really don't need anything but a knowledge of God's love for you, and a desire to serve him and do his will.  Dedicating your life to serving the Lord helps you realize what is important and helps you focus on the things that are important and not get caught up in the day to day minutiae that is always bombarding us.  It is through accepting the Lord's will that we realize the happiness that the Lord has for us as part of his plan.  

I think the thing that has helped me get to the point I am at now is a shift in my mindset.  For a long time I have let myself be worried and focus on trying to change things that I have little to no control over.  I feel like I have gotten to a point now in my life where I am ready to accept things as they are, understanding that this is what the Lord has planned for me right now, and just sit back and try to enjoy every single day.  Often before I would let things that were out of my control frustrate me and that would take up a lot of my focus on a day to day basis.  Living life like that makes it a lot harder to focus on the positive, as well as enjoy the day to day gifts that life brings to us on a daily basis.  There is a lot of good in life, and we need to be looking for it and willing to accept what the Lord has in store for us to truly take advantage of the happiness that he wants for us.  It is important to trust that he knows what is best for us in the end, and that often times not getting what we want in the moment turns out to be a tremendous blessing for us in the end.  Sometimes we are privileged to see the end result, and sometimes we are not, but I am confident that when we get a chance to look back on our lives and see what the consequences of our unfulfilled wants and desires would have been we will be very grateful.  02-15-11