It
was confession time. When I announced with frustration, “This is
the year I was supposed to be working on becoming more content,” my
husband practically choked on the water he was drinking. He knows how
much trouble I have had accepting circumstances and focusing more on
what I have instead of what I don’t have. It isn’t really about
having the right stuff. Here are some of the things on my
discontentment list, things I allow to rob me of joy and contentment
in the present moment:
hot
weather
high
humidity
noisy
neighbors
dying
plants
a
crazy schedule
unreasonable
expectations for licensing
And
there are things I am ashamed to mention. I let these kinds of things
keep me wishing away my life for an ideal future, and it doesn’t
exist people! A few things have set me on a corrective course. Again.
When someone I love was diagnosed with cancer it gave me a new
perspective. I mean really, how does hot, muggy weather compare to
the difficulty of all the uncertainty cancer brings into a life.
As
complaints rise to my lips like bile in the throat, the sign I had
seen just ahead of me in the Walk for Alzheimer’s San Diego flashes
across my mind. It was a sign bravely worn by a woman, one of many
walking for someone they love(d). Her sign read, “I walk for my
husband Mike. He has Alzheimer’s, age 66. Behind my sunglasses
tears rolled down my cheeks as I cried for her, for her husband and
the difficult challenges they both face. I come from a family of
longevity; sixty-six seems quite young.
Today
I want to live grateful; I just finished reading I Am Malala
by Malala Yousafzai and
Christina Lamb. So now I tell myself this is just a noisy
neighborhood, it isn’t the sound of bombs and gunfire that press
one down with fear. It is all in the perspective. You see whatever it
is that makes me dissatisfied with any aspect of the life God has
placed me in turns out to be nothing compared to the things others
face. But were I in a community of gunfire and bombings, God still
wants me to find my contentment in relationship to Him, not my
surroundings. I find this a bit tough, particularly when I consider
those who truly suffer.
For
so many of us, like me, discontentment nibbles away at us as we dwell
on the least significant imperfections – the minor
dis-satisfactions. I am not minimizing the importance of changes and
difficulties many must wrestle down each day to find peace and
contentment, but some are greater than others. I live a blessed life
and it seems cruel and unkind when I am all down about the noisy
neighbors or the hot, humid weather when someone down the street just
lost a child or a woman in another part of the world cannot leave her
home for fear of being attacked because she is a woman.
I
love Alana Dawson’s illustration of how God brings life into the
hard places. The situations that are cause for our discontent God
uses for good in our lives. I found this encouraging and a good
reminder to be open to see all
He has provided and not all I want.
Read her blog post at
In
Traveling Light author
Max Lucado unpacks Psalm 23. He asks this question, “Are you hoping
that a change in circumstances will bring a change in your attitude?”
In his
chapter addressing contentment Lucado reminds us we “need to learn
a secret of traveling light. What you have in your Shepherd is
greater than what you don’t have in life. . . . You have a God who
hears you, the power of love behind you, the Holy Spirit within you,
and all of heaven ahead of you. If you have the Shepherd, you have
grace for every sin, direction for every turn, a candle for every
corner, and an anchor for every storm. You have everything you need.”
I
want to live as if I believe, which I do, Psalm 23:1,
“The Lord
is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
We
are flooded with the promise of a perfectly happy life if and
when . . .
If
what? When?
It is a daily discipline to live the truth: in Him I have all I need.
I’ve
not discovered any other way of being satisfied. And you? Have you
discovered a corrective perspective to the nagging itch of
discontent?
