Contentment Always

Paul talks about this, I believe at the end of Philippians. He says he learned the secret of being content in any and every circumstance. Yea riiiggggggggghttttttttttttt!!!! Just how he learned this has always intrigued me. Did he learn it by suffering, the thorn in the flesh God would not remove, no matter how badly Paul asked for Him too??

I wish i could learn and apply the secret. I wish i could get outside my head and do it. I watched some show where jillian michaels worked with a family to get them in better health. The family had a father who died. I found myself emotional just hearing that and watching them. There is a huge hole i have which is because I suppressed emotions and pain and struggles that happen in life because i wanted to be strong, i wanted to appear and to be able to *handle life* and fill the role of the *man of the house*, even though this began when i was 8. My mind has always been gazillion miles ahead of my emotions and will in dealing with life. It has always been hard, especially in my view of myself as a christian, to acknowledge the weaknesses I have had and the hole that has been there from lacking a father or a male role model in any close sense. How do you go back to repair things that were supposed to be taken care of from 8 to 16??? I think maybe my inclination to pursue psychology and spirituality because of these things.

i want to flip that switch like i see in so many bloggers. Where they are able to find the contentment in the midst of stuggles, no matter what they may be. I want to fend off the perfectionism that tells me I cannot ever achieve what i want and need too, and the defeatism that says i have been unable and incapable of reaching a place of contentment, a place of being where God wants me to be. What is that place??? Why do I see others as seeming to know what it is, but i know they have their own struggles and ups and downs too.

A help i have is that my deepest desire is to seek to follow the spark, no matter how small, that Jesus placed inside me. No matter how bad things get and how hopeless or useless or discarded i feel, God and Jesus love me and call me to risk loving too. Hope to hear from anyone relating to all this, however it might be.