Carol McClain

How to Enjoy Your Circumstances: One Easy Way

by: Carol McClain @CAROL_MCCLAIN

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matt. 6:34)

We’re living in a scary time. COVID-19 rears its head, and we don’t know if we’re next in line to succumb to it.

The pandemic aside, no one guarantees our life for more than the present. According to Annie Dillard, referring to life in general, the amazing thing is, “…not only does time fly, and we do die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at all, and are vouchsafed, for the duration of certain inexplicable moments, to know it” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 79).

Right now we breathe. I taste the bitter tang of Jamaica Me Crazy coffee on my tongue. My husband works in his office. Through my window comes the spring breeze and the scent of roses.

I inhale. Close my eyes and become aware of this gift. My life in this moment.

We need to savor the present. Be wholly alive in the moment–not in our plans. Neil and I booked our entire spring with more craft shows than we ever had. To a one, each cancelled. The loss of revenue and meeting new clients hurt. I must remember, the future is not promised to me. Only the now.

But…

The other day, I got to witness the courtship of two hummingbirds at the feeder. I sat on my lawn swing and watched. The pandemic vanished from my mind. Family far way no longer worried me. My dirty house, the weeds in the garden, all faded. The two birds danced unaware of me. And I saw it. I became a part of a mysterious world usually hidden from me.

God allowed it.

In our problems, God is present.

“… the one thing all religions recognize as separating us from our creator–our very self-consciousness–is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures.” (Ibid). Don’t be separated from God or from friends and family.

How to Enjoy Your Circumstances?

1. Live fully aware of the now.
2. Live fully aware of your Creator.

 

 

One last point–my itty-bitty–advertisement. A good book can immerse you in the present. Try A New York
Yankee on Stinking Creek. You’ll laugh and cry and be transformed.