As a kid watching the six hour version of 'Pride and Prejudice,' I used to think it very tedious, when were they going to get to the good part? Why must we linger on forever waiting for the fate of the Bennett girls to be decided? Not that I viewed my childhood much differently, when are we going to get to 'the good part?' Then it was on to college and I couldn't wait for graduation, grad school, career…'the good part.' Then you get old and realize you aren't going to be young again, that all that impatience was rather uncalled for, because now you will spend all your fading days longing for your youth, or at least that is the modern fad amongst Westerners. We are never happy with what we have but always anxious for that to come or pining for that which is lost. This is a delightfully horrid scheme to steal our joy and it is quite effective with the modern mind, this permanent state of discontent.
There is nothing wrong with being excited about what is to come, but if it costs us our joy in the present, it becomes that old fashioned sin of covetousness: envy, jealousy, discontent which force us to dwell in bitterness and misery all our days when we should be enjoying our youth or college days or whatever is currently before us. We cannot alter the past nor hurry the future, rather we can only decide how to live Today and therein we must be content or forever be discontent, having found the limits of our mortality. Will we sit by the wall of our finitude and sulk, or make what we can of the time we are granted? Are we determined to be unhappy until we are parents, get married, have a certain car, own a house, graduate from college…whatever it is? But that will not make us happy, it may be exciting for a week or a day, but the shiny newness will soon wear away and we will be stuck pining for something else, never satisfied and life will soon pass us by. Rather we must decide to find joy Today, rather than waiting for some distant 'what if' and should that 'what if' come, we'll be all the happier on that day.
There is a story in the book of Acts that ends with the intriguing phrase: 'and he went his way rejoicing.' The fellow involved had just had his erstwhile companion literally spirited away and was left all to himself along a dusty stretch of road; he was all excited about what he had just heard, literally knew next to nothing about it, and his only source of information was suddenly gone, but instead of sulking or getting angry or annoyed or wondering when next he could learn more of this matter, he picked himself up and 'went his way rejoicing,' trusting the answers would come, but for the moment so excited about life and his part in it that he had no time to worry about the details. I want to live like that!
As an exercise in 'practicing Joy,' I have decided to live life as an expectant mother. I missed out on such an idea with our first adoption, so busy with work, stress, life, etc. that I had no time to for happy anticipation, let alone enjoying the wait (who enjoys waiting?), besides, what if it never happens? What if it never happens? I still have the joy of my anticipation (or the stress and dismay of thinking the day would never come), regardless of the outcome. I am a bit jealous of pregnant women who know the approximate day and likely the sex/number of her child(ren) and can tell a stranger on the street without too much trouble, it is a bit more complicated with adoption. Your child could come tomorrow or five years from next Thursday or never; it could all fall apart at the last minute, you never know, but rather than dreading what may or may not happen, this time around I will wait with hope and joy, rather than doubt and fear, and if it never happens, at least I have not wasted the intervening days. Life is too short to live ever in the shadow of dread and fear and discontent.
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