On contentment

              Contentment is a concept that has always baffled me. I never could make sense of just being fine with the way things are. I mean, I fully understand being grateful for the good things you've been given, but it does not compute in my brain why you should just abandon drive to make things better or to make yourself grow or even pursue justice where it failed to take root. That last one really bites into my soul deep.

               I am reading a book by a woman who, unlike most (especially Christian) authors, does not write from a place where "struggle" is the mental and emotional pressure you place on yourself as you almost wish a life of spiritual abundance on other people whilst you sit smiling listening to a poor, battered soul share trials and pain for which you have no point of reference.  I know plenty of women in ministry who get their hands dirty and who have lived real life, but it seems that precious few of them are authors. Rather, I have read in great supply, women who relate minor unhappinesses as "ways God was growin me!!!". It has been offputting to me to be offered some trite comfort by a soul sitting in privilege.

              This book and this author have been very different, and so it has lowered my guard and allowed my heart to listen to what she has to say. It is easy to preach and live thankfulness when your life has not included much loss. You don't even ever need to have lived a fancy moment in your life. If your days and plans even closely resemble convention at all, most everything you face as a struggle can be brushed aside like a hair that has fallen from your coiffed circumstances. If you want me to listen to advice you have to offer, it is just true for me that I need to know that you know what loss feels like - significant loss a significant number of times.  I have seen the reflection of that in this author, and so I have been willing to read and have quite an evolution of my thoughts.

              When I say to you that I have been my whole life a rule follower, I need you to know that it is a painfully obvious trait of my character. And it was actually never from the origin of not wanting to upset people. It actually registered very early in my heart that deviating from the structure provided to you by people who loved you could cause them to be hurt. I found that type of hurt to be so purposeless that I, even still, very highly value a well thought out rule. Additionally, I experienced that the following closely of rules actually evoked very positive feelings from other people which rolled right into positive experiences for me. One of those positive results was and still is the freedom to make some choices for myself and the granting of requests I had because I also have usually been astute enough to realize what was reasonable.

               So I did this. I built a very reasonable life construct in my head that didn't just allow for, but centered around devotion to the God who loves me. None of this seemed weird, and I had found myself even allowing for the absense of some of the things that were hard and fast requirements for some of my constituents. I didn't feel like I was settling in any way by passing these things by. I felt really excited about the life I wanted so much that I didn't want those things anyway.

               Then came the day that I got the life I wanted. 5 months and 1 day after our first date, I married the Marine who had swept me off my feet during his Christmas leave. By this point, NOTHING in my life story and fairy tale looked like those of the other girls, but I loved mine. It was as colorful and unique as I have always been. No part of me felt cheated by it. I almost felt proud of myself for that. In fact, my heart willingly and excitedly accepted the role of support I could provide to the man I loved the moment he told me that "It gives me somebody to come back to...somebody to fight for.....it would just...give me that 'at ease' feeling" for us getting married before he left for a deployment into combat. It was happening in a very meandering way, but it was happening - the life I wanted.

                The moment - the exact moment, where I stood, what I was wearing, which lights were on in the direction I was facing and most especially how it felt when I realized that the life I had was not the one I wanted. I had stepped right into a life that was nowhere near the life I wanted. "oh....no.....what have I done? We are married now. I have married him. This is my life....how long am I going to have to do this? How long CAN I do this?" all screamed through my brain in almost an instant.

                My parents were the epitome of commitment. Their life together was not all romance, but their perseverence and complete and utter commitment to each other was the stuff of the most romantic notions you'll ever hear. They "loved each other through" some really high hurdles. I watched it happen. Some of these happened outside the window of my ability to recall, but I remember a lot of them, so I just drew from that. I was just going to love "through" the things in front of me that looked like challenges, and then my husband and I would have the same example and the same romance to show to the world and to the children that hadn't even been thought of yet.

                I was 9 weeks pregnant when the father of that baby left for what would be his last deployment for the Marine Corps. I spent from late fall to mid spring praying over him and doing everything I could to make him proud and happy to come home while our sweet little first born grew under my heart. He came home without a scratch anyone could see, and then our baby was born. Life almost immediately began yanking me further and further away from the life I wanted and the one I thought I had.

                 I fought. I fought really hard. I would spend almost every evening with my laptop on my knees researching strategies I could use to yank my dream back from the clutches of life which I was now realizing could be cruel to a depth I didn't know existed. Then, I don't even know how many times, I would wait for everyone else in my house to be asleep and I would lay totally flat on the floor of my living room, and I would pray. I would literally beg the God of the Universe to fix and restore the life that I always wanted. I would beg and I would cry, and I would cry until the carpet was soaked under where the tears fell from the end of my nose.

                   There were glimpses over the next couple of years that gave me a hope that was nothing more than an apparition, and so those glimpses would dissipate just as quickly as they'd smoked their way up in front of my gaze until one day I realized that I had no choice but to suspend my dream of the life I always wanted. I packed a couple of bags of clothes and then scooped up now two children and put them into the backseat of the cab of my brother's truck, and I rode away from the life I always wanted and the life I thought I had or was at least going to get.

                   It is a surreal thing to see the words "irretrievably broken" printed on a paper that is public record and for those two words to be what is the final description of a dream you spent your whole life building. Somewhere during the litigation and processing of paperwork and mediation and court dates, I felt so turned around. I felt like my whole world was on a tilt-a-whirl at a fair and the operator had just decided to leave while I spun until I was sick. I couldn't figure out what to pray for, so I just sat in my sister's bedroom chair and thought about what I wanted. "I just want to know the truth because I don't even know who to believe about anything anymore including myself."  So I postured myself in the same way I had really countless times before, and I begged the God of the Universe to focus attention on me and show me truth, and then I prayed that God give me back the life I always wanted, and I will never forget the clarity with which I heard his voice in the ear of my deepest heart.

"No."

             This is another life moment that is seared into my consciousness. I am honestly still a little dumbstruck, but God's answer to a request I found to be, not just reasonable but beneficial even, was a very hard "no". Also in that moment of such clear answer, I couldn't help but admit to myself that I'd actually been being given that answer for a really long time. In fact, I knew I'd been hearing it every single one of all of those nights with my nose pressed into the carpet.

              As pen scratched across paper leaving the ink of our initials on the very paperwork that was proof that almost the whole of my identity was changed, I was properly introduced to Hope. Because when everything of the life you wanted and everything of the life you had gets completely erased with just paperwork, hope is really all you've got left. That is where you realize that hope has got to be your starting place.

               Now, as I have learned from spending years with a philopher, every trait is a spectrum of virtue and vice, and it is totally our own choice of where we would like to fall. I feel comfortable in admitting that I have a measure of tenacity that rivals really a lot of other people. The phrase "I would have quit way before you did" is very familiar to me. As is obvious, there can be great virtue with this. Persevering through difficulty or weariness can yield amazing things with amazing influence for good. It's just also true that this spectrum of tenacity also has a pole of vice, and that vice is stubbornness. Examples of this in my life don't so much include my insisitence to get my way in interactions with other people. It's just that I sort of carried with me that persistence to keep chasing and keep asking for the very thing about which I had been told "no". While I had accepted that God had said "no", I really hadn't accepted that it would be a permanent "no".

                  Some choices in your life present with their origin very clearly like "I should never have bought that car that was outside my budget" or "I think I'm going to go to school closer to home next semester. They have a better program at ___" or "I really hate this job. There's not a reason for me to keep working here". Relationships are seldom that cut and dry. There are almost always intricacies that are knit through what makes sense and what seems advantageous or good as many as there are ones that are woven way outside what we can see as good for us. And you know, I really spent every moment away from the life I always wanted still wanting that specific life that I wanted, so I jumped at the very first chance I was given to "try again" and "make it work". One truth about me is, you cannot out-love me. You may love equally, but I will let someone walk all over me and treat me like dirt and do that for a long time before I sever ties. I just would rather love, so being presented with the opportunity to do that with the idea of all of that being reciprocated was like music to me. I will tell you this: hindsight being 20\20, I will never know in this life if the reconciliation effort for my marriage was "supposed to happen", but I do know this - that time gave me one of my greatest life treasures. About a year after we all moved back into one house, the uncharacteristic queesiness I felt after reading a book from my seat on a road trip inspired me to pee on a little plastic stick that showed me fast that baby number 3 was growing under my heart. Upon learning that baby would be a girl, I found it the right thing to do to bestow upon her the middle name "Hope" - the very thing from whence she was conceived. 

              A few months into my pregnancy, I agreed to move away from my home and away from my family. Wise people begged me not to, but I wanted to sustain the happiness I felt. Rejecting this request made me worry that the happiness would end, and gone, back into the ghostly smoke would float the life I always wanted. And so everything from inside our house went onto a truck, and we drove way from my home.

                It happened to me again - that question "what have I done?". With the passing of not much time at all, I was reacquainted with the Truth that I was not actually living the life I always wanted and was definitely not living the life I thought I had. One day, I was slammed in the gut with finding out that I did not have the marriage I thought I had on top of the knowing again the other 2 truths listed above, but I persisted. "I can take this. This is not too much for me....I don't want my kids to have a broken home", but I was so, so tragically blind to the fact that a broken home is all they had ever had.

                 I spent months digging my fingers as far as I could into the grip of insisting that the life I had could and would become the life I always wanted until one day I saw evidence of the broken family my kids had, and I couldn't ignore it anymore.

                 Once again I packed us up and I drove away from the life I always wanted, but this time was different. This time, I knew we were never going back. None of the people in our family were going to ever have the life I always wanted. It was gone forever.

                  One day I will be able to share the events leading up to and the day of one of the most excruciating days of my life that further redefined me in ways that still feel nothing short of corrupt. One day, but today is not that day. Today I want us to keep traveling THIS journey. We will travel that one later.

                 I'm inarticulate when I try to describe the experience of life being so horrific that you feel so numb that you feel like it's not you. You're not actually living this. You coast in the numbness until your thoughts reconnect well enough to silently ask yourself to recall the person to whom all this is happening and then it is emotional gunfire to your soul every single time you remember that its you. There is truth in qualifying one of the stages of grief to be denial. And it can be surprising even to yourself how long you stay there. Because you are so scared by the fire of whatever is happening that you're in shock and all the nerve ending have been burned away anyway.

                I spent at least a full week in that shock because it wasn't just the marriage that I'd always wanted and the life I always wanted that I'd lost. I was now being robbed of the very thing that has been my driving force since the first moment I knew I was with child. I was now living the reality that I no longer even had the motherhood that I'd always wanted.

                I have spent now half a decade demanding God to give me answers. I have yelled his name in the solitude of my home - in the floor again - just wanting truth. There are things I know for a fact that will always be true. We should always fight for what is right and we should pursue justice and we should share truth, but I had the same question over and over and over again. When, God????? When are you going to give me the life I always wanted? Why would you let that all be ripped away from me when I did nothing to warrant such a punishment???

               I took my knowledge of the needing to fight for what is right, but I paired it, once again, with my insistence for this very specific set of circumstances that build out this one thing - this painfully specific idea of....the life I always wanted. And if God let all those parts be ripped away from my grieving hands, then He would put them back. "God, are you going to give that part back?" And every single time, I have heard "Yes. I will" from the Voice who has never broken His word. "Okay well when?....Can you tell me when so I can feel relief? Will you tell me when?" For years, my panicked spirit has begged again. Silence. "Okay well, if you're not going to tell me when, tell me HOW. Because I can do really good things with the strength and relief of at least knowing how. Just tell me how....is this how? Like could this be a way?" Silence.

               At various points in my journey, my very weary and battered and bruised and thirsty and empty soul would say "Do I keep fighting?....am I supposed to be in this battle? Because this looks really impossible and I don't even think you give one thought to me....I don't matter.....I don't matter..." and the moment that my soul would run out, the silence would be broken with a powerful "You matter to me. I am willing to suffer every horror for you. Oh sweet baby, you matter....the war is far from over, but now.....now you rest behind my shield. Now, I FIGHT".

              So I was able to grow to the point of trusting Him to fight on my behalf. I remember the day. I was sitting in this same spot in my living room but on a different couch, and I had become frustrated (but not for the last time) that I felt like I was spinning my wheels. Why had I not made up any ground? Why had things not been given back? He had promised me over and over again that things would be restored to me. What was I supposed to do to make that happen, and how bad was this going to get before it all would change? I had begun living my life paralyzed by the fear of more loss. Loss does that. I heard his voice in my soul again, but now He was doing the asking "When are you going to start trusting me more than you choose to be fearful of what a person can do to you???" I realized right away how badly I had hurt his heart. No. I realized a little bit of how badly I hurt His heart, and my soul answered immediately "Now." That marked the beginning of the end of fear. Yes. The end of fear is a journey, and I only just began it a couple years ago.

                Convinced that I had mastered the lesson of this horrible battle of a trial through which God was allowing me to travel, I kept coming back to Him. "Can I be out of this now? I'm good. I will glorify you and do good with this. You can change my circumstances now and then I can get really strong and big and loud for you.....can you do it now?" Silence.

                When God is silent, is He gone?

                 I will tell you that my angry and scared and exhausted and hurting soul has cried out so many times "God, are you even a thing???? If you're even a thing, I need you to show me. You show me right now!" A gentle response has followed every time "I AM and I love you desperately forever". So then I would ask again if I could be done with this horrid nightmare or what I needed to do to be done, and all I ever would get was "keep going. I will show you. Keep fighting. Stay close so you can hear me, and I will tell you".

                 I have now danced that dance for months upon months. I have now learned that God was not going to change my circumstances in order to let me recover and get big and strong because things being easy to carry is never how you get strong. No. You take those weights and you make yourself push into those weights every day. When you're strong enough to hold them up, you don't quit because you're muscles would actually weaken without the constant reintroduction of this heavy thing that feels just shy of all you've got. And then you add more. And then you are strong. God was getting me strong so I can change things - not changing things so I could chill out and magically acquire strength. That doesn't happen.

                So I have now also spent months absorbing this truth, and I have continued to be like a pestering impatient child "Now?....okay what do you want me to do? What do I do?" His answer "Be still. And know that I AM God". "Okay I knew that. You know I already knew that" but the instructions there. Be still.

                There are things you can do only if you are sitting still. When you are in mental motion, your attention lites on something just only long enough and then takes flight again to your next focus. I haven't wanted to be still because I didn't want to look. Because every time I HAD sat down to be still, it was my pain staring back at me. Pain of every dream I ever thought up being gutted and thrown back at my feet for me to stand there helpless while it bled out and died.

                I began to read this book about being thankful. I read examples of people in Biblical accounts giving thanks in the midst of their trials. In fact, this author actually spends several pages elaborating on the idea that thanksgiving always precedes an actual miracle and we cannot be ready for the whole picture of what God has for us if we are living in the attitude of always wanting more or worse - turning up our noses in ingratitude at what we HAD been given. Goal oriented me saw it all spelled out. Choose to live in Thanksgiving and I will be ready for God to FINALLY give me the life I always wanted. Perfect. And I will praise Him and honor Him because, with all the time that has passed and all the attacks and robberies I have endured, the broken hearts of everyone who loves me will celebrate and praise God and anyone who hadn't known him before will be able to see really well how deeply he loves us.

                I also gained understanding about being actively thankful during horrible things. I had always thought everyone meant that you were supposed to say "Thank you, God, for this really horrible thing happening to me. I know you are working it for my good" as if He had some sadistic satisfaction in creating us to grow best after he had taken off his hands of protection and then feel.glad while he watched us get pummelled. I really ALWAYS have struggled with how contradictory that was to everything else I knew about God. This author revealed to me that it's not the horrible injuries and tragedies for which we are to be thankful. It's that He doesn't want us to lose sight of the hope of good things that let's anything take away completely and that He will NEVER allow life to be devoid of beauty. That he will always have something - some secret reminder of hope to us like a Morse code signal that He is not dead and beauty is not gone. He will always make sure there is the presence of beauty no matter what, and He wants us to look for it around the pain that is so consuming of us.

                  I knew I had work to do there. I pride myself on not needing fancy or expensive anything. In fact, I would rather pay as little as possible for something to make sure I am getting the largest, most effective return for the money that was earned. But I have never liked my house, so I tried to begin practicing feeling content with it for right now...until God gives me the house for the life I always wanted. It's okay. I can handle it. I won't let it steal my joy just because I hate it because....I'm sure I'm going to get the life I always wanted.

                 Okay. Great! I'm also currently actively doing work to heal more injured parts of my soul. I am fast approaching being the healthiest version of myself I maybe have ever been. Okay let's do things to grow! I felt God telling me to get really brave and courageous and defy a bunch of negative things that had been planted in my brain that said I was limited. Not today!!!! Heh heh. Not today. So let's add some things to my life to grow because my numbers loving and ever budget conscious brain has done the math and you know what???? Here it is! All I have to get is XYZ, AND THERE IT IS! I JUST MIGHT BE THIS CLOSE TO THE LIFE I ALWAYS WANTED!

               SLAM!! That is the sound of the door to the opportunities I sought. I crept slowly and got close enough to turn the knob and push the door ajar a few times only for it to slam shut again. "Why? What?...if I'm not supposed to be this thing I thought you were telling me to pursue, what am I supposed to do???" "Sit still" I heard again.

                 So still is where I have been forced to sit....for weeks. I have itched to be productive. I have cried in frustration. I have beaten myself up at how poorly I have done at being the person who could make things better - who could be the one to get to the place of having the life I always wanted. And here, He has sat with me, and today, I finally got it.

                 The life I always wanted was never the life that I will ever have because it's not the one I'm supposed to have! And I have been so preoccupied with trying to trudge my way into the wind towards a life that never existed. It was all fake. The idea I had that I was the person who was just displaced from the life I always wanted was a lie I forced myself to believe, and it has spent years yanking my gaze away from something very important.

                  This one.

                   I have spent all this time from the moment I first stood in the hallway all those years ago not realizing that God was never keeping me from good or keeping good from me. He wasn't denying me a life! Me not getting to live the life I always wanted was never God just leaving a vacuum that would eventually just suck up this construct of what I just KNEW would be really great and then the hole would be permanently repaired!

                     He was never not giving me a life. The whole entire time....He was giving me this one. This finally hit me today, and, for the first time in 13 years, I saw it. Complete. It was like somebody cleared away the debris that had been hiding a treasure this whole time! This life - the one I've always had, was never less. It was never less than. It isn't worse. It isn't harder. The one I always wanted was never better...than this one.

                     I have spent this day blinking open my new eyes, and I see it - restoration after robbery, opportunity after injustice, beauty...for all those ashes. And I just feel like... aw man. How was I missing this???? How was I not noticing what this was just because it was packaged differently that what I was looking for?

                     I was never a failure. I was never alone. I was never done. I was never purposeless. I was never dead. I was never ruined. None of this was ever ruined because, in the midst of all the things that hurt and in the midst of all my heartbreak of never, ever getting to have the life I always wanted, God sent a vein of beauty to shoot straight through the middle and spring up a thing I'd never expect to find - THIS life! The one I was always meant to have. And this one...is even better.