Several reports have been released of late about the level of happiness women have or have not been experiencing in recent years. Some blame it on the women's liberation movement. To me, the notion that anyone can "have it all" is only achievable if one changes his or her definition of what "it all" is. If a woman works eight hours a day to achieve ever higher rungs on the corporate ladder, can she expect to feel fulfilled with the couple of hours she can spend with her baby before his bed time when she returns home? Does it make her giddy to spend all those hours toiling for someone else's goals just so she can pay the babysitter, let alone the mortgage, the car payment and the grocery bill? On the flip side, is the stay-at-home mom intellectually stimulated by the conversations between Big Bird and Elmo? Would she rather use her hands to bang out a well-written brief than to wipe a nose in a constant state of drip? How does she feel when she sees her husband stressed because their lifestyle or even their financial viability rides on his next paycheck? Does she not wish to help lighten that load with an income of her own? Considering the temporal, no I don't think I as a woman can have it all. How could anyone?
But finding fulfillment involves much more than the indicators these studies have analyzed.
While I would agree that aspects of feminism has contributed to the degradation of the family and some of our society's greatest moral failures, most notably legalized abortion, I don't think it's the root of our unhappiness as a gender. In fact, I know too many men to suggest that discontentment only plagues the female. It didn't hit me until recently when I heard Barbara Rainey talking about ingratitude on Family Life Today that maybe the root of why any of us feel unfulfilled boils down to one thing - it's our nature.
When we were created God put in our hearts a longing for Him, yet we try to fill that hole with anything but Him. Throughout biblical history we see a lineage of unhappy people. For example, the Lord rescued the Israelites from slavery and graciously provided every morsel they put in their mouths, yet they complained all the way to the promised land. In contrast, Rainey pointed out, the Pilgrims took time in their own promised land to thank God for His provision, although very few of them survived the arduous journey overseas and bitterly cold first winter at Plymouth.
The Pilgrims had nothing but their lives and their freedom, yet they were grateful. They had to labor just to eat; we can pick up dinner in a drive-through while sitting in heated cars that will take us to our brick homes with Internet access. Many of them starved to death, while obesity is among our most dire health concerns. Today we have everything at our disposal and we're miserable.
As Rainey pointed out in her radio address, grumbling is a major offense to God. The book of James tells us we don't have because we don't ask, and when we do ask we don't receive because we ask with wrong motive. We want to spend what we get on our pleasures.
We feel unfulfilled because we don't appreciate what we've been blessed with in the first place. And that calls for a change in attitude - to be content with what God has given us, even the challenges. Be thankful for those extra pounds you'd like to lose because it means you got to eat and for that mortgage you struggle to pay each month because it means you get to sleep under a roof. Those two alone are more than what many people of the world have.
I may no longer get to fraternize with colleagues, hobnob with newsmakers or bring in a paycheck with my name on it, but I've exchanged them for an incredible life God gave me. I couldn't count all the blessings. I have a husband who loves the Lord more than he loves me (which, by the way, is much better than the alternative), two beautiful children I've been called to raise and an honest-to-goodness relationship with Jesus. I think that when I focus on all God has provided for me, even through the struggles, my only response has to be gratitude. It's only then can I realize I really do have it all.
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