http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2012/05/post-mothers-day-reflections-on.html
As usual Wendy writes so eloquently for herself I have nothing I can think to add beyond merely linking to her work.
Well, okay, maybe I might add a point or two, though not about Wendy's observations of her own life. In the last month or so I came across the podcast of sermons from a pastor I used to know twenty years ago. He was preaching a sermon in which he discussed, as an aside, labels that are given to us or that we take up for ourselves. He has come to observe over the last twenty years that one of his struggles is that he can often be discontent. If you got a B why didn't you get an A? If you got an A why did you get an A minus instead of a regular A? If you got an A you could have gotten an A+. And so on.
It may be hard to overstate the significance of the apostolic advice that godliness with contentment is great gain. I admit that I don't feel like a bastion of godliness or contentment much of the time. There are people I have known who I would say are godly but they are discontent and this discontentment may ultimately prove the great fountain of fractures in their godliness. Giving thanks to God in everything sure doesn't feel like something worth doing if there are so many things you don't have that you wish you had. Some people find it tough to be thankful to God because they don't have a spouse. In an economy and time such as this I actually do thank God I don't have a wife or children. It's not that I wouldn't ever want to be married one day ... I think ... maybe ... it's that at this stage in my life being discontent about being unmarried is something that would have to be cultivated. There's a difference between wishing you had something and being upset that you don't have it. In the last few years I have not been nearly as unhappy that I haven't had a girlfriend as that I haven't had a steady job. I assure you one of these has been substantially more important to me than the other! But things change. Too bad they often seem to change for the worse.
And at the same time contentment isn't something cultivated in ideal circumstances, is it? It can be but the reality is that a person can be discontent in even the most perfect of circumstances. A person may be discontent because everything is too perfect and there are no more challenges, it seems, to be provided by life. Some people are genuinely only happy if they are fighting or struggling with or against something. Others are discontent because until they get the thing they want they are unhappy. Then they get what they want and it turns out to not satisfy them. Go back and read a few interviews with John Lennon. He got what he wanted early in life (he didn't live that long before he got killed, let's remember) and that dream come true turned out to not be what it was cracked up to be.
See, I managed to write a bit but it was not to add things to Wendy's own thoughts. :-) Go read them for yourself. These are just my own thoughts by way of a rambling introduction to her thoughts.
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