I am reading Perfectly Yourself: Discovering God’s Dream For You by Matthew Kelly, and I am storing up nuggets of wisdom like a squirrel storing nuts for winter.  Summertime means less solitude and time for prayer in my life, so too less time to write.  But with each change of season in our lives, literally and figuratively, we get the blessing of working on different kinds of prayer.  Summer turns my contemplative self into an apostolic worker; doing more dishes, more laundry, and more attending to the needs of my family, which is a privilege.  You could also say it more of a Martha season than a Mary season (Luke 10:38-42).

One thing that doesn’t change spiritually, is our need for spiritual formation.  We should always be feeding our spirit with the right kind of sustenance; the Word of God, as well as supplement teaching that help us understand how to live a life that lines up with who we want to be.  As Matthew Kelly says, “we become the books we read”.  That also goes for the shows we watch, the people we hang around with, and the kinds of media we expose ourselves to.

One gem that stuck out to me in “Perfectly Yourself” has to do with managing our choices to agree with the beautiful creature God has called us to become.  This is what I am chewing on today:

“Unhappiness is the fruit of doing and saying things that contradict who we are and what we are here for.  Unhappiness is not something that happens to us like poor little victims.  Unhappiness is something we do to ourselves.  You can choose to be happy–and never forget, God wants you to be happy even more than you do yourself. ”

I should note that I am sharing what I am working on for myself, and there are qualifications of happiness that have to do with wellness of the mind and body, certainly.  Today, for me, now in this season of summer, and this season of my life, I am going to work on making choices that agree with who I feel God is calling me to be in this moment.  It’s never easy, but God gives us the grace for each moment; not for all of the future at one time; take it a moment at a time and  like it says in the book, “just do the next best thing.” With prayer, making the next best decision for myself in the moment, can be a simple grace-filled way to manage each day.