Value Your Present Moments

I find that I am a person of habit and I really do not like to change my routine if I don't have to. This does not mean that I am inflexible, but I like my structure and always have. Before I started my last diet, I got in the habit of eating Chinese food every Wednesday evening after Choir practice. I also got this wacky idea that God can speak to you through fortune cookie messages, but that is for another day and another therapist.

Last night I stopped for Chinese food and my fortune read: "Value your present moments." Now, granted, this is not the most significant gleaning I have taken from fortune cookie theology, but it was interesting that a lot of what I have been dealing with over the course of the last year has been about appreciating the here and now and not always looking to the future. Maybe I am settling down for a change. I have a friend who asked me a couple of weeks ago if it were possible to never really settle down, to always be in a state of motion. I told him I did believe there were other models and that we do not have to follow a certain path, but I really feel that at some point, whether in our minds or spirits or even physically we need to be at a state of contentment. The Apostle Paul told us that he had learned to be content in all states. I believe that I am finally understanding what that means. And I am sure my blood pressure will thank me for it.

I have also talked a lot about identity lately. I realize how much I thought of myself as a college professor, and not so much as a child of God who could do whatever God called me to do. When we want to identify ourselves with something so much, we begin to lose sight of who we are in Christ. I am thankful that this impulse to identify with what I do rather than with who I am (or whose I am) is diminishing in my life. More to come . . .