On Walking in Contentment
Hi and welcome back!
The last blog I wrote was a little heavy - glad you made it through. If you haven’t read that one yet, can I encourage you to do that first. Today, we’re basically going to do a follow-up and shift our focus to contentment, so I’ll pause and let you do what you need to do… 🙂
Okay, so we’ve established life is hard. If you’ve been on this planet for 2 seconds, you can see various degrees of pain and suffering. No amount of feel good messaging is going to change that. But, despite it all, there is hope!
As I thought more about disappointment, I wanted to follow-up on what it means to move from a place of disappointment to a place of peace. This doesn’t mean you’ll never go through a time of disappointment again or that you need to move on super quick - everyone processes things at different rates. However, we can move from discontentment to contentment, despite whether or not our circumstances have changed. What I’ve come to realize is our mindset really does matter. We get to choose what we think about and what we dwell on.
Now, please hear me out on this, I don’t want people to just sweep things under the rug so you can move on to being happier and content quickly. I think depending on what you’re dealing with, going through disappointment can feel a lot like mourning and going through the stages of grief. It can be a really long process and one that I encourage you to wrestle with - and ultimately take to God. If I’ve learned anything about him in the last 4 years, it’s that God can handle more than we give him credit for a lot of times. He can handle the really big ugly emotions and the desperate cries. He can take it all because he’s been through it all.
With that said, let’s get back to mindset and how we get out of the disappointment rut. First off, we need to protect our minds and focus on the things we can change and where our joy really comes from. Contentment isn’t a passive “everything is fine” mentality, but rather, I see it as a choice to lean on the strength of the Lord and to choose to acknowledge what’s hard and yet, keep going.
I was reading in Philippians the story of Paul in chapter 4. Anyone who has grown up in the church or maybe even walked into a locker room at one point or another has probably seen or heard Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.” For a long time, I just took this verse at face value. I thought, I can muscle my way through any challenge life throws at me, because I have the Lord’s strength. Well, as I’ve heard it said, any text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext (shout out to Lisa Harper’s podcast). So in that spirit, let’s look at all of Philippians 4:10-13 (NIV).
“I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret to being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all things through him who gives me strength.”
Did you catch the two references to being content? Paul acknowledges that he knows what it means to have want and to have enough. I’d wager that the good majority of people reading this right now, have experienced both sides of this equation too. However at the end of the day, Paul is saying the secret to contentment is recognizing the fullness of God, even when his circumstances may be crummy. He’s choosing his attitude – acknowledging what’s hard, and maybe even disappointing, yet choosing to keep going and keep trusting that he will make it through whatever lies before him.
So my challenge to all of us – whether Christian or not– is to be like Paul. For us not to rely on our circumstances to tell us how we feel. Life can be really really hard sometimes, but it doesn’t last forever. Walking out of contentment and shifting our mindsets will allow us all to live more joyful, more full lives. It’s then from the place of fullness that we can go out and love the people around us, showing generosity and compassion to the people we interact with because we are no longer trying to muscle our way through from a place of deficit. We get to rely on the strength of the Lord and through his kindness show that light to the world. And that right there, that should give us all SO MUCH HOPE!
xo, Cait
