Learning the Meaning of Contentment

I am generally a very content person. I am happy where I’m at. What I’m doing and who I get to spend my time with. I am not easily rattled and glad to be where God has put me when He has put me there.

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To shake me from this foundation is a soul-aching kind of rattle. I’m confused. Stumble about as though I’ve lost my direction. And in many ways that is the case. I don’t like to be restless. And restlessness is often a choice.

But not always. Last summer, I was incredibly restless. With where I was, what I was doing—nothing felt right and yet to leave didn’t feel correct either. Wise voices in my life told me God was planning something bigger for me. I wasn’t so sure. I just wanted to go back to being happy and content.

Now I’m a resident of Colorado, have a great job and life is moving forward.

So is what does it mean to be content? Does it mean always pushing aside your dreams and desires to be “happy” where God has you? That’s superficial happiness at best and doesn’t lead to true contentment.

 Contentment, at the core, is peace. Peace with where God has you. What God is teaching you. Right now, 

to be 100% honest, there is more I’d like to be doing.. There is a new beginning I want to leap into with both feet.

I’m ready—or like to think I’m ready—to find the one to spend the rest of my life with and stop living as a single and embrace what it means to be two—three in Christ.

But…that’s not where God has me right now. And that’s okay. Doesn’t make it easy. Doesn’t make it my ideal, but that’s just the thing: it’s MY ideal.

It’s a God-driven dream, sure. He wouldn’t have put this desire with me—within you—if it weren’t the right thing. But it needs to be with the right one. Not because I’m desperate—which I’m not. Not because I’m impatient—and yes I can be. And not because I want to settle—something I will never do.

Contentment is a choice.

Remember when your mom would tell you being bored is your choice? Same concept. Because even in the midst of restlessness and sensing the greatest of God’s coming changes, I had to learn to be content. I had to learn to wait on Him and His perfect timing for my future.

We learn to be content by aligning our hopes and dreams for our future and our present with what God has for us. By asking Him to teach us even when it hurts and feels slow. To give us grace and patience and teach us what those words mean.

Because through everything, God is teaching us. Growing us. It’s our job to learn to be content through the growing and stretching and know that every day is an adventure deeper into the will and love of Jesus.