What Do You Fear?

People around the world were polled about their greatest fear.  They were asked if they were more afraid of being alone, going broke, losing their looks, or speaking in public. This month's Readers Digest summarized the results.  People in nine out of the sixteen countries polled chose loneliness as their greatest fear.  More people in the U.S. and six other countries chose going broke as their greatest fear. 

Maybe the fact that Americans fear going without money more than we fear going without other humans exposes us.  Six of the seven countries that listed going broke as their greatest fear are "highly industrialized".  Isn't that interesting?  Those of us who have money are most fearful of losing it.  Maybe people who don't have any money anyway are wiser; they know that being penniless isn't the worst thing that could happen.

The poll did not ask people if they ever feel fearful.  It assumed that they do.  I suppose that the experience of fear is universal.  Only the degree of fear or what triggers our fear varies.

I'm curious.  How about you?  What are you afraid of? 

My Happiness Habit: How to Avoid Being an Extreme, Raving, Self-centered Lunatic.

I have been thinking about developing a new habit lately.  Admittedly, most of my habits are accidental bad habits.  But, this time I am trying to grow a new, good habit.  I want to be a person who is deep down, on the inside, content.  I want to be someone whose joy can coexist with pain.

My guide is the apostle Paul.  In Philippians 4:4-8 he is closing his letter from a Roman prison with some quick advice.  The fact that Paul wrote this advice while sitting in a damp, stinky prison with rats for company makes me want to listen.  If Paul could be content there, surely I can be content in the midst of my everyday hassles.  Towards the beginning there is a sentence that seems out of place to me.  In my English Standard Version Bible it says, "Let your reasonableness be known to everyone." It is sandwiched between "Rejoice" and "the Lord is at hand; do not be anxious..."  If I was helping Paul edit his letter I would have suggested moving that phrase somewhere else.  What does reasonableness have to do with either rejoicing or anxiety? There must be some reason that it is stuck in this incongruous place.

What is "reasonableness" anyway? I am no Greek scholar, but I can navigate references so I looked it up.  The same word is translated, gentleness, unselfishness, and moderation.  Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, (in my mind I always think Strong's Exhausting Concordance...) says it means appropriate, and by implication, gentle, moderation and patient.  This is starting to make more sense.  Paul is saying don't be unreasonable, harsh, extreme, and impatient.   

I think another key is in the next phrase, "the Lord is at hand." 

The Message says, "Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you're on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!"

I am picturing the frightened cry of a small child who has had a bad dream.  The mother dashes in to soothe the child.  She wraps her arms around her.  "Don't worry, Mommy is right here."  Her presence soothes, comforts.  Nothing can frighten the child now.  She can be reasonable instead of afraid because she knows that her Mommy is able to vanquish all the monsters under the bed.

So, like that fearful child I can rejoice.  I can be reasonable and gentle and unselfish.  I can keep from overreacting.  The Lord is at hand.

My Happiness Habit

I want to grow into a person who is characterized by deep contentment, the habit of happiness.

I started last weekend by thinking through the command to "Rejoice ... always"  I decided to focus on the sunny side of things.  About 10 minutes into Friday evening I discovered that rejoicing always was not as easy for me as I thought it would be.  There were little bumps.  It was nothing major.  The kids argued.  My husband and I had slightly different ideas about the best ways to respond to them.  We were all a bit on edge.  I realized that I was not rejoicing.  I hated the turmoil, even though it was minor turmoil.  Ripples in the household put me in turmoil.  I longed to hide for a long time, all weekend even, in a quiet place with a good book and a lot of chocolate.  Clearly, I still have much to learn about contentment.

I have had happiness on my mind for a while now.  I picked up the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  The author decided that she wanted to be happier.  She studied research on what makes people happy and set herself ambitious goals to achieve happiness.  Each month she focused on a different aspect of happiness.  She rated her success and charted her progress.

I was intrigued, maybe she had discovered the keys to happiness.  Does having a clean closet really make a person happier?  I wouldn't know... A short way into the book I started to feel vaguely uncomfortable with its approach.  I realized that I could never follow Gretchen's lead.  For one thing I hate charts.  Her set-a-goal-and-measure-your-progress way of doing things simply doesn't fit me. Besides, being orderly and disciplined about happiness felt wrong somehow. Shouldn't happiness just bubble up from the inside? I knew there was more to my discomfort than personality differences between Gretchen Rubin and myself, but I wasn't sure what the problem was.  I picked up Walking with God by John Eldredge. Something John said triggered an "aha moment" for me.  I suddenly understood my discomfort with The Happiness Project .

You can't possibly master enough principles and disciplines to ensure that your life works out.  You weren't meant to, and God won't let you.  For he knows that if we succeed without him, we will be infinitely further from him.  We will come to believe terrible things about the universe--things like I can make it on my own and If only I try harder, I can succeed. That whole approach to life--trying to figure it out, beat the odds, get on top of your game--it is ...entirely without God.  He is nowhere in those considerations.  That sort of scrambling smacks more of the infamous folks who raised the tower of Babel than it does of those who walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day.  In the end, I'd much rather have God.

Gretchen tried to figure out how to make life work.  She came up with some useful tidbits. But no checklist, even a thoroughly researched checklist, could make a person content at the core.

However,  I don't want to give up.  I still want to be characterized by deep contentment, the habit of being happy.

I decided to go back to Philippians 4:4-9. 

One reason my "sunny side" approach didn't work was that I mentally deleted the key phrase from the passage.  "Rejoice in the Lord always." The fact that the waters of my life are not always as placid as I would like them to be is a gift.  That way I remember that, at root, I am rejoicing in the Lord, and not merely in the gifts he gives me, not even the tremendous gift of a beautiful family.  Sometimes I get things twisted around and I act like God's job is to make me happy. He wants me to be happy, but more than that He knows that what I really long for is love.  I long to experience God's love for me and love him back.  Nothing less than that will be a stable enough foundation.  Nothing less lasts.