Learning to live in the moment

This experience in France has taught us many, many things, for which I am thankful! I've talked in the past about these sort of lulls that we tend to enter into after a while, when life gets easy and comfortable, when you fall into a routine (in a bad way). This has made it increasingly clear to me how much my attitude, habits, and behavior affect not only myself but the world around me. Inasmuch as we (humanity) tend to become creatures of habit, expecting rather the same each day, and not doing anything to really enhance or change that expectation, I've realized too a certain anomaly of our behavior, which is the expectation of the future. In this sense, I mean "expectation" in perhaps its most nervous, negative, and nasty connotation.

Being in France hasn't been easy (though I can barely believe how quickly our five-and-a-half months here have literally flown by!) It has presented lots of challenges, and lots of unknowns. While we've drawn closer together through these, as we together learn to rely on God for answers, for patience, for His will, we continue to struggle through such situations. If you've followed our blog from the beginning you've surely noticed that I tend to be a fearful person--I often trouble myself with worrying about the future. Whether these be simple or complex issues doesn't seem to matter much. All I know is that I get an idea into my mind and I tend to worry myself sick over it. Later on I'll often realize that I worried for nothing, and sometimes even feel guilty over my mis-trusting behavior. Not that one ought to step blindly into the future with some "leap of faith" (yeah, don't think we're supposed to do that in a literal sense), but perhaps we are instead called to live each day to its fullest extent, yet always with the future and what my Grandpa Braun would boom out calling "the KINGdom of GOD!

I've really come to realize a lot about this here. I've been starting to fall into this habit of fear and worry again as our time to return home approaches. While we love and miss everyone dearly, I constantly think of how changed we will find people and things that we left. Of course, all shall be yet familiar (I hope), but lots of things will be different. Sometimes thinking about it is enough to make me want to stay here in France where I feel secure. After all, I have a job that I love, I know my life, I get to live in this fabulous city with my husband, we can pay to live here and we have no excess bills, no cars, no repairs...but I know that none of this means actual security. More a lack of serious responsibility! Thankfully the Lord has shown me to folly of such thinking, and I am seeking to mend my thoughts.

Well while I've been considering all these things, I was pleasantly surprised to find my thoughts nicely "worked out" for me (at least partially, but very logically) by C.S. Lewis. I borrowed a collection of his signature works from a friend, and started with the Screwtape Letters, which I haven't read before. Figured I'd switch off between fiction and nonfiction until I finish the book. Well, I'll leave you with Lewis, who I'm sure can explain this all much better than I can hope or attempt to. In this passage, veteran demon "Screwtape" is writing to his novice demon nephew, "Wormwood" about one of the most tried and true ways to distract humans from the goals set up for them by "The Enemy" (Who is, in this twisted mindset, Christ the Lord):

I had noticed, of course, that the humans were having a lull in their European war—what they naïvely call "The War"!—and am not surprised that there is a corresponding lull in the patient's anxieties. Do we want to encourage this, or to keep him worried? Tortured fear and stupid confidence are both desirable states of mind. Our choice between them raises important questions.
The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.
Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. .It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward.
To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too—just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other—dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.
It follows then, in general, and other things being equal, that it is better for your patient to be filled with anxiety or hope (it doesn't much matter which) about this war than for him to be living in the present. But the phrase "living in the present" is ambiguous. It may describe a process which is really just as much concerned with the Future as anxiety itself. Your man may be untroubled about the Future, not because he is concerned with the Present, but because he has persuaded himself that the Future is, going to be agreeable. As long as that is the real course of his tranquillity, his tranquillity will do us good, because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed. If, on the other hand, he is aware that horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once. Here again, our Philological Arm has done good work; try the word "complacency" on him. But, of course, it is most likely that he is "living in the Present" for none of these reasons but simply because his health is good and he is enjoying his work. The phenomenon would then be merely natural. All the same, I should break it up if I were you. No natural phenomenon is really in our favour. And anyway, why should the creature be happy?
Pray for us!