Lesson 213
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
1. (193) All things are lessons God would have me learn.
²A lesson is a miracle which God offers to me, in place of thoughts I made that hurt me. ³What I learn of Him becomes the way I am set free. ⁴And so I choose to learn His lessons and forget my own.
⁵I am not a body. ⁶I am free.
⁷For I am still as God created me.
My life has been filled with miracle opportunities. Some I took advantage of and some I didn’t, but that’s ok because I always get another chance. What I don’t choose to learn from comes around again so that I can choose again. There have been some lovely things happen to me and some that were painful but I appreciate them all.
This morning, I got some new windows put in my house. Not all of them were exchanged. During the hurricane, I had one window that allowed water to get into my house but there was a minimum number of windows that had to be changed for them to come out, so I got 6 new windows. It took months for them to get to me and it was expensive.
Also, I see that I need to replace the rest of the windows and that is going to be more expensive. The reason I haven’t done it yet is that I need more outside work done and I won’t know how much money I have for windows until that work is done. I haven’t gotten it done because so much work is needed in our area that finding contractors is really hard.
To get the windows installed, I had to have all the blinds and shade taken down and all furniture moved away from the windows. I couldn’t do this alone and so had to ask for help. My son-in-law came by and did it for me and then the next day returned and put everything back in place. The timing couldn’t have been better because Monday he is having surgery and I wouldn’t have had the benefit of his help. Last night I had to sleep sitting up in my recliner because I couldn’t get to my bed.
All of this could have left me feeling stressed and would have done so in the past. But I have been working on the kind of thinking that leads to stress and this time, I have been at peace throughout this process. The whole thing went very smoothly and the men did a really good job. It is not that I got my way this whole time or that there were no inconveniences, but when things seemed not to be what I wanted them to be, I changed my mind. I accepted it as it is when things could not be changed.
One of the lessons that God would have me learn is that how I feel about things determines if I am happy or stressed and that how I feel is entirely up to me. How I choose to feel is not determined by what happens in my life. What happens is irrelevant to how I feel. I could have worried about the money, worried about not finding a contractor. I could have been upset to have my house turned upside down.
But deciding to worry or feel resentment or anger doesn’t make sense. Since peace is my goal, choosing to feel upset is counterproductive. I simply choose happiness regardless of the circumstance. It took me a long time to realize that I had a choice about how I perceive things and thus how I feel about them. Then it took longer for me to form a new habit, but it was worth it.
That I can be at peace now under circumstances that would have caused anxiety in the past is a miracle worth having. I did my part by noticing when I was not at peace and asking the Holy Spirit to show me another way to see. He did His part by healing my mind. We make a good team, the Holy Spirit and me.