The Paradox of Contentment

Remember how I was talking about feeling discontent and a little like a heretic when I mentioned it to my friends? It happened again last night.

This is a different group of friends--mostly a little older than me. They attend my church. We are in a Small Group Bible Study (we're finishing up John MacArthur's Twelve Ordinary Men).

After discussion of this week's chapter, we went around the room to talk about prayer requests. Now, I don't know about you, but Prayer Request Time can be intimidating. I think this is for several reasons: 1, because it's hard to be vulnerable. If you open yourself up to what you really need prayer about, people will see your weaknesses. 2, it's opposed. The last thing the Enemy wants is for us to be genuine with each other and take it to the Lord in prayer.

I was the last one in the circle. I was thisclose to following in everyone else's footsteps and shrugging off my needs. But one of the things I'm so grateful for is this group where everyone will look at me and say, "Do you have anything we can pray for?" Sometimes it gets tiring to ask people to pray for the same kind of thing over and over. But I honestly think one of the worst things we do as Christians is pretend we're okay.

There is a Lie, a pernicious lie as Dr. Del Tracker (of The Truth Project) would say. It goes like this: You're the only one struggling with this. Don't tell anyone about it. They'll see how bad of a Christian you are. You'll bring everybody else down. Just keep it to yourself. You're on your own.

I don't want to listen to that lie. So, I took a risk and told the truth. I'm not doing all that well, as I said earlier. I'm struggling. Financially, Spiritually, even Physically. My attitude has been crap lately. I'm trying to figure out what my next steps are, what God wants me to do. Well, I didn't put it quite that well to my group; nonetheless, several of my friends piped up immediately and admitted that they were struggling, too.

Then something interesting happened. A couple others in our group launched into something almost like a lecture on contentment. Now, I know these folks meant well. And I certainly understand the points made. It's true that we are called to be content no matter what our circumstances are, and that whatever our stage of life is, we can find things to complain about.

This is the paradox of contentment: we are supposed to find contentment no matter how bad life is, yet we are never supposed to be fully comfortable here in this life. We are told to be joyful always, think on the good things, praise God in every circumstance. Yet balancing those words out are huge sections of scripture--in some cases, whole books--dedicated to lament and struggle. God knows we will wrestle--in fact, those who were closest to Him are often portrayed as having faith, but still struggling.

This is just another example to me of how the Christian life is one of Balance, and how things are not as simple as they are often painted.

Our tendency as a Church to want to "fix" people, or offer good advice and bible verses when people are truly wrestling and hurting has become a handicap. God is the one who heals, and He does it differently in different people. To assume that we know exactly how He works seems arrogant, to me.

For me, it's not as simple as wearing a smiley face pin or playing happy Jesus music. That doesn't fix the problem. And I certainly can't will myself to be content. But I know that God is working on me, and continually reminds me that He's taking care of me.

While that may bring a kind of contentment, that still doesn't change the fact that I need a new job, and I don't know what it will be. Though I do believe He will provide it. But I'll still wrestle when I get in my car and see how little gas I have. *Sigh.* Yet, how can I tell others that God provides, if I've never been in a situation where I desperately needed Him to come through for me?


PS: Sara, I'm still looking forward to your brilliant post about Truth.

Soul Friends Discovered.

Jess, I’m so glad that you’ve found a group of friends who can support you locally. You and I are closer now than ever, but there’s really something to be said about having people there who can be soft arms when I need a hug and give me Kleenex when I have to cry. I’m glad you finally have that. It’s something I prayed for you.

The last year and a half have been difficult. I’m trying not to dwell on it, but in less than a month, it will be one year since Mike died. And I still think about him every day. This summer I went through the longest dark night my soul has ever seen. I couldn’t see the end of it. And I functioned- I went to work, I spent twenty- three hours a day with other people, and inside I was dying. I didn’t even like to be around myself, so the people who walked with me through that time must have the patience of saints. (In Mitch’s case, I know that this is true.) I was hard to take last summer. I’m grateful beyond belief to the people in my life who stood by me during that hard time, but there were friends who didn’t. They were hurt by the things I said and did and won’t trust me now because of those things. On the other side of that, two of my best friends right now are friends I made during that time. They saw the state I was in- messy, broken, hurting- and they blinked and said, “I’ve been there, too. Let’s go to Sonic.” They didn’t judge me, they didn’t tell me to get it together or do things differently. They were just there while I dealt with things, because they knew I would be there for them in return.

Jess, I can echo your thoughts on being “fixed.” Who can really be “fixed?” (Besides Gizmo, Travis’s dog. The procedure actually solved a lot of problems for the entire Sappington family, but that’s a story for another post.) I don’t want someone to try to fix me, I want them to walk beside me while God fixes it. And I say that because I’ve been through wanting to fix friends. I’ve seen my hurting friends and wanted so desperately to take them up into my arms and “sew on patches to all you tear,” as Ingrid Michaelson would put it. I had to learn really fast that there’s no way I can sew up friends who have been ripped apart at the seams. I can hold the seams together while God sews them up, but it’s not up to me when that happens. So for me, last summer, hearing comments like, “You should really just go to therapy,” and “He died three months ago, you should be moving on,” weren’t helpful in the slightest. Those are the rational “fixes” to what was wrong with me. My heart was broken, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to make it better. I just had to do it on God’s time, not mine or anyone else’s. It’s not like I wanted to be depressed all the time. I didn’t want to say mean things because I couldn’t remember how to put nice words together. I didn’t want to have a sinking, irrational fear that everyone else was going to leave me, too. Those things went away with time, but those friends who went away haven’t come back, not completely.

So now, Jess, since you brought it up, I’ve been mulling over this concept of “soul friends.” I have many, many friends and even more acquaintances, but when it comes to those friends who know my heart, inside and out, there are only a few. (You’re one of them, sistah.) I can’t count all of them as “soul friends,” but of the ones I can… oh, wow. I’ve been blessed.

Great Blessings, Small Heresies

So. Another year, another blog. A new experiment!

I was going to write the following thoughts in my main blog, "Scope For Imagination," but I got carried away with my musings on Spring and Easter.

I've been in a weird funk lately. It's hard to explain. If I were going to use spiritual language, I'd probably say that I've been under attack lately. I could probably explain some of it on a physical level as being attributed to hormones. But it's kind of sneaky and hard to pin down. I've just been very grouchy and irritable and discontent with my life lately.

The thing is, I've felt this way in the past, but it's usually been a lonelier feeling. A few years ago, I was going through a dark time. A dry and barren time. They call it 'the wilderness' or sometimes 'the dark night of the soul.' It was rough--but the worst part is, I had very few people to talk about it with.

Things have changed since then. I now have a circle of friends again. But these feelings have returned, and honestly, I don't always know how much to share with people. I say I believe in being honest and authentic and transparent, but there's this other part of me that just doesn't want to trouble people with my doubts and struggles and discontentment. I had several people ask me today if I was all right. I am not, but I haven't the slightest idea how to explain why I'm not. And most people want to be able to help--to fix whatever is wrong, whether through words of comfort or encouragement, or helpful advice...whatever. Sometimes I don't want to be "fixed." Days like today, I just want space to figure things out. But that's not very conducive to community, is it?

So, the thing is, God has blessed me with a loving family and a great group of friends. And I'm incredibly grateful for that. As Sir Thomas More says,

“The thread of our life would be dark, heaven knows,

if it were not with friendship and love intertwined.”

But then again, people are people, and we all get on each other's nerves eventually.

Lately, I've found myself in a tricky place. One of my groups of friends is a 20somethings group at my parents' church. It took me a while to feel like I really fit in there, and one of the reasons is that they tend to be very Reformed in their theology. I'm sure there is an official definition of what it means to be Reformed, but the contextual definition in my life is: Someone who thinks they have all the answers.

Maybe I'm a little too post-modern, but I just don't feel that way. Yes, I believe in God, and yes, I believe in the infallibility of scripture. But...I don't know. Maybe I overthink things too much. To me, those two things don't translate into me having all the answers.

Here's an example: We're currently going through the "Truth Project." In theory, a very good, beneficial tool. But from the beginning, I've been wrestling with it. There are several reasons. For one, I think it focuses too much on head knowledge. For another, I think it promotes a modern way of thinking over a post-modern, and creates a sort of dislike of anything postmodern. But mostly, it seems to perpetuate an idea that we have all the answers. Where do we get all the answers? The Bible, of course.

Here's where I start to feel a little like a heretic. As I said, I do believe in the infallibility of Scripture, that they are the very words of God to man. But I would be lying if I said I understood everything about the Bible. I don't. Sometimes it confuses me. Sometimes it frustrates me. What I think confounds me more than anything, though, is that there are so many people who have their own "take" on the Bible and what it means.

Don't get me wrong. I studied the Bible in college. And in so doing, I was exposed to new ideas of what certain texts meant, things I'd never considered before. Quite frankly, sometimes I find it challenging to navigate all the claims.

When I mentioned this tonight, in the group discussion afterward, the advice given to me by a friend was to look at the context of whatever scripture is being quoted. Granted. I learned that in my first Rapinchuk class. But for me, it's just not that simple.

You know how people talk about a "child-like faith?" Well, I had that all growing up. It was the "I just believe" syndrome. I think that's precious. But as I got older, I was faced with complex things--difficult circumstances and messy situations. I found that a simple answer didn't always do the trick. In fact, sometimes a simple, cut-and-dried, black-and-white assessment often did more harm than good.

So, I'm not into formulas or checklists or bumper-stickers. To me, this Life, this Journey, this experience of knowing God and walking with Him, is so much more complex. It's not something you can do on autopilot. It's not something you can ritualize. To know God...how can we ever be so presumptuous as to think that we can and will fully know and understand Him here in this life?

In the past few years of my life, I've grown comfortable with questions. I've learned that it's okay to not know everything. Even the asking is okay, as long as you realize at the end of the day that you trust the One you're crying out to. I've heard a few people say something like this lately: "What we need, what this culture needs, is the truth. We need to tell people that we have the truth."

I think this postmodern culture would ask, as Pilate did, Qui es Veritas?--"What is Truth?"

I could go on, but I'd like to hear your thoughts now.