Divine discontent…
Note: Tom, your comment about Jimmy Brown means a lot to me, thanks…
I’m not going to be able to explain this fully today. I will write about it again soon. But in the meantime, a number of you have sent me e-mails describing your life right now… and it’s one difficult season. Family crisis’. Unemployment. Broken relationships. You name it.
I fail at this with great regularity, but when I find myself in such a place, I try to pull back and look at my life from 35,000 feet. And I tell myself this is a season of divine discontent. It’s not what I wanted. Not what I hoped for. Not what I planned. But it’s what I got. Can’t avoid it. Have to live through it. One day after another. Is there something in it for me? Divine discontent.
What are you learning in your season of divine discontent?
Stew on that… and we’ll come back to this soon… MR
I translate your term “divine discontent” to what I know as time in the “wilderness.” Wilderness periods (due to choice or external circumstances) are a great opportunity to purge the things that are holding us back. In my experience, though, idols don’t usually go quietly. Sometimes (not all the time) the length of our time in the wilderness is contingent on how long it takes us commit to letting these things go, and actually doing so. Discontent can feel safer than dying to self, but the latter is far less painful in the long run and leads to a perspective that feels much more at home at 35,000 feet.
I’ve been pondering this off and on all day and I just keep coming back to the biggest thing I’m learning is that most of the things that are causing me grief are the result of my own choices. Some of them are very valid choices and have to be what they are, but some of them are just stubbornness in action. I am, while not always consciously doing so, choosing to be at odds with certain people and situations in my life. In some cases, I know what needs to be done to change the situation but am unwilling to make the effort. In others, I just don’t know what to do, so I do nothing. Still, there are others that are the result of things outside of my control (work issues specifically) and I’m not a big fan of things I can’t control.
So, long story (and woah a lot of honesty) short, I am learning that I cannot control everything in my life no matter how hard I try.
As I approach 30 this year (eek!), I am trying to learn how to relinquish the need to feel or be in control of everything. I am trying to learn how to forgive and move forward (insight welcome on the moving forward one for sure!) I am trying to learn how to be who I am, and be ok with that person in all aspects of life. Ultimately, and I think this is probably a key to a lot of my current sense of discontentment, I am trying to really learn who God is in my life and what that really means. Not how can I make it sound pretty and church-y, but what does it mean when it’s just me and God. Tough stuff.
How’s that for an answer? :)
Maybe a little too honest,
Mel