My beloved and I recently watched a documentary on TV that, in part, described the emergence of the mall pretzel — the things I put her through.
It was actually a pretty fascinating story. They might not be at a Marvel level, but many foods have interesting origin stories.
Being the hungry humans that we are, talk of going to a mall and getting a said pretzel became more frequent in our conversations.
Quite recently, we even settled on a day to go, and as the day came, we decided on the ideal time to go.
I’m sorry if your evenings aren’t as robust as ours.
With thoughts of cinnamon, sugar, and baked buttery goodness swirling around in my head, we were getting closer to zero hour for a pretzel.
Did we go and get them? Of course, we didn’t.
I wish I could tell you that my decision to pass on a pretzel was some high moral undertaking — it was more out of stubbornness than anything.
Nonetheless, being the reflective individual that I am, it gave me a chance to ponder such a situation through the lens of faith and come up with something that I hope can help those at various stages in their lives.
What to do with a craving
We all have things that we want. Some of them are large, like a new job, a new TV, a trip to Hawaii, or peace of mind.
Some of them are smaller, like a candy bar, a bottle of soda, a pen that works, or . . . a soft chewy pretzel.
We are not going to get everything on our “want lists”.
Some things we have to do without because getting them is not practically possible. Some things we have to do without because it’s not part of God’s will that we have them. Ooooh . . .
We are going to struggle mightily during life if we do not get used to not always getting what we want.
Someone sang about that in the late 1960s, and he seemed to think we’d get what we need if we can’t always get what we want. Studies are still being done on this concept.
Part of my recent pretzel pondering was the question “Do I really need this?”
I came up with a number of “yes” and “no” responses to that question.
It gave me an idea, though. Since we know there are many times we are going to go through life not getting what we want or not having things go our way, we can prepare for it.
Each day, or as often as you can deal with it, think of something you want. Think of something that would make you happy to have it. Think of something you would look forward to having. Think about it for a good part of the day to a point where you are looking forward to it.
Now, the next part is tricky. Don’t do this so that you hurt yourself in any way, but whatever the thing was that you wanted and you were going to get — don’t get it.
Respectfully and gently deny yourself of it.
Don’t get that ice cream sundae. Don’t get that piece of cake. Don’t go to that movie (or stream it). Don’t buy that thing online that you’ve been thinking about clicking on all day.
I realize there is a risk to this. It needs to be done with love of God in mind. This shouldn’t be a way of hurting yourself.
It should be a way of saying, “God, you give me so much, you give me what I need, there is more I want in my life, but I don’t want those things to eclipse your love and generosity toward me.”
Doing it right
Those who read what I write every week may think this sounds similar to what I said about not overdoing it on Easter, or even be a way that we can put more control into our lives, even though I said we are not in control. Maybe?
However, we all could use some more balance in our lives when it comes to wants versus needs and accepting God’s gifts and blessings versus those we want to bestow upon ourselves.
Everything in this life will pass away. There are things we have to lose and things we have to have never had at all.
Many of these occurrences are according to God’s plan.
Whether we like it or not, God’s plan is given to us every day. We have no choice but to accept it.
Is it always going to be “good” in an Earthly sense? No. Some of it makes no sense, really — to us.
Any little practices we can do each day to accept this and get used to this can only help.
Find ways to “want” what God wants to give you.
Find ways to say “I want what you want” to the Almighty.
When you figure out how to be successful at that, let me know how you did it.
Thank you for reading.
I’m praying for you.