We Have Everything We Need

*As a reminder, Year of Plenty posts are written by Chris.*

In our very first post, we talked about our reasoning for pursuing the Year of Plenty. Among many reasons we gave, one was, “No matter what, we want to show that we have more than what we need, and we want others to find inspiration from what we’re doing.”

Do Not Worry

Elaine and I consider ourselves Christians. Because of this, we find a lot of meaning in the stories of the Bible. At the beginning of the New Testament, there are some books called “Gospels” which tell the story of Jesus’ life in lots of different ways. In one of the Gospels, Matthew, there is a section called the “Sermon on the Mount.” This is a large collection of the sayings and teachings of Jesus that sum up his teaching on how we should act. At the end of chapter 6, Jesus teaches specifically about not worrying. The passage is worth quoting at length:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

It’s interesting to me Jesus talks about not worrying in the middle of telling people how they should act. Why would he do that? I think there are a few reasons.

First, worry and anxiety can lead us to act in some ugly ways. If I worry about things I don’t really have any control over, that may lead me to try to control those things anyway. Maybe I try to control my kids’ every action. Or maybe I try to control how people think of me through social media.

Second, worry about the future leads to a lack of present-ness. In other words, my anxiety about future events can take away from my enjoyment of what’s happening right in front of me. I literally lose my life when I stop living in the present and worry about the future.

Third, anxiety and worry are antithetical to gratefulness. Gratefulness is a way of being in the world; it can be a momentary feeling, but when practiced regularly, it can change us. Rather than viewing the world as hostile or indifferent, we can start to look at our lives and each day as a gift.

We Have Everything We Need

I think this is what we were trying to get at when we said we want to show we have more than what we need. Nearly three months ago, when we began this journey, we looked at our jobs, our money, our home, and our family. In that moment of clarity, we decided that we already have everything we need. We don’t need me to pursue the next job just because it provides a little more money, or the chance at a decent 401k.

I’m not even saying those are bad things. But the choice to go work at the other job was based off of some wrong desires in ourselves. We weren’t satisfied with our current surroundings, so I took the “big job” in Dallas, hoping that it would help to increase our mobility (ugh). That dissatisfaction with what we had was a symptom of some deeper anxiety and worry about the future.

The trick is that this applies in all kinds of situations. This last week, our entire family got sick with the flu. I spent roughly five days either on the couch or in bed, and we were all grumpy and tired and could barely move all week. I kept thinking to myself, do I really have “everything I need” right now? I mean, it’d be nice if I didn’t feel like death. But you know what? Even when all four of us came down with the flu at the same time, I realized that we were okay. We had medicine to take care of ourselves and the girls. I had leftover HSA money to go to the doctor when my fever spiked. Our neighbor offered to pick up our groceries when we were nearly out of food.

Even in the midst of hardship and frustration, it’s possible to live out a life of gratefulness. We have everything we need.