I’m pondering on the porch. It’s late afternoon, cold but not uncomfortable. I can still see snow on the shaded roof across the street. The flock of cardinals are enjoying the feeders, drinking from the bird baths. A small bevy of doves, bobbing their heads under one feeder, are eating the seeds that drop from the cardinals’ feeding. A fat little wren is calling his friends from the feeders on the other side of the yard. Nobody has come to supper with him so he’s eating alone. He’s so loud when he pokes his chest out and sings.

I’m thinking how happy and content I am with my simple life. Sometimes being content just involves accepting things the way they are and not wishing your life away for something unobtainable. Accept things the way they are and practice thankfulness. Just to wake up with breath for another day is a gift. Accepting life and the world as it is isn’t easy. If we truly love, we accept people as they truly are. Thank God for memories to sustain us, to make us laugh, to help us remember days with loved ones who have left our lives.

Agatha Christie said one of the luckiest things that’d can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood. I had a happy childhood, carefree and content. I think my children had a carefree, happy childhood. They ran around in the woods, mainly in their underwear when they were little, racing with chickens and ducks and cats and dogs. We lived in Chief’s daddy’s art studio down a dirt road in the woods behind Chief’s mother and sister’s houses.

I’m looking at the scuppernong vine near the bannisters here hoping I can make jelly this year and I remember the first time I made homemade jelly as a young bride. Chief and I had picked wild plums. It was 106 degrees in the kitchen, I kept a thermometer on the wall there. I was happy and content stirring the boiling jelly, sweat running down my face. Chief was so excited when he came home, counting the jars of jelly cooling on the counter. I was so proud of that jelly.

We had a wood stove for heat in the winter. I loved cooking on the stove’s top, bacon was delicious. I would dry the babies’ cloth diapers on a rack near the stove. Some of the happiest days of my life were spent there. Chief and I always yearned for those years again. We lived there 13 years until we moved into his mother’s house. All three of our children began their lives in that little house and we filled it with love and happiness.

Philippians 4:12 reads, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” Living life as a Christian, pursuing the path God has put before us, gives us contentment and peace. When we endure hardship, God gives us everything we need to follow him and overcome those hardships.

Life is a beautiful journey. We choose whether to walk with grace or drag our feet tripping up on things we can’t accept or change. We need to express gratitude for every little blessing and be thankful for every wondrous day.

“Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have.” — Unknown