The Secret of Contentment

Today I want to share with you a treasure from Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow. I highly recommend this book!There’s one little page that I have referred to often in the last 15 years. And I want to share that quote with you today. Page 11. Happy sigh.

It’s a treasure from a missionary named Ella who worked with the pygmies in Africa for 52 years. She left everything familiar and comfortable. No electricity or air conditioning. She even had to bring in the thermometer from outside some days because it couldn’t read over 120 degrees without breaking.

Mimi [Ella’s daughter] wondered how her mother had done it–how she lived a life of contentment when her circumstances would have caused the hardiest to complain….In an old diary of her mother’s, she discovered Ella’s prescription for contentment:

• Never allow yourself to complain about anything-not even the weather.
• Never picture yourself in any other circumstances or someplace else.
• Never compare your lot with another’s.
• Never allow yourself to wish this or that had been otherwise.
• Never dwell on tomorrow-remember that [tomorrow] is God’s, not ours.”

Peace be with you today!

love,d

(Quoted in Calm my Anxious Heart by Dillow. Ella Spees adapted her habits of contentment from a selection by E.B.Pusey (1800-1882) that was quoted in Mary W. Tileston’s Daily Strength for Daily Needs).