Contentment Conshmentment

I looked through many quotes on contentment to begin this post.  There were several good ones made by great people: Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Henry David Thoreau, but none of them worked. So I decided that I should start this post not with a quote, but instead with trying to explain the feeling that rises up in my heart as I read these proverbs for the soul.

There are quotes about being happy with what you have, or that contentment is a choice, or if you aren’t content now you never will be.  I am reading all of these sweeping words of wisdom and after each one I am tempted to make fart noises with my mouth. (That sentence is going to come back to get me when I apply to be the next Beth Moore.)

I find that my reaction is like a bitter child.  With every statement encouraging me to “rest in my circumstances” my response is “NO! I don’t wanna.” **pout**

I don’t want to be content.  That’s a hard sentence to write but it’s the truth.

You have heard me mention the illness of a loved one.  Well it’s my husband, and I don’t want to be content with a life where my husband never gets well.

My husband is a fantastic man who suffers with a chronic illness called chronic fatigue syndrome.  I don’t want to necessarily go into detail about his illness, but let’s just say we have good days and bad.

He has been sick for a very long time, and Chronic Fatigue, unlike cancer or diabetes, doesn’t really have answers, course of treatment, or real community.  And the little of those things it does have varies from person to person   I am by no means belittling cancer and diabetes. I am just stating that due to the nature of my husband’s illness we can often feel misunderstood and alone. 

This is a common feeling for people who deal with long term illness, whose diagnosis is vague. You feel your doctors do not understand because if they did they’d find some way to help you.  Because what you have doesn’t have a name or at least a name that is readily recognizable, you feel as if you are continually explaining what you have to others and that they never really quite get it. (Though not for their lack of trying.)  And because you’ve asked for healing and it hasn’t yet come, it can feel, some days, that the Lord doesn’t hear you either.

So as I wade through this long term trial I am faced with question of contentment. And my response is the same childlike answer, “No. I don’t wanna.”

Here is my main issue: I want God to make my husband better.  And somehow being content feels like settling for some sort of lesser life.  If I’m content with this life, I’ll never get a different one.  If I’m content with vanilla, who would ever give me chocolate?  I feel that somehow I need to hold the line of protest.  Because if I say this is ok, then God will never rescue me…us. Because that is how life and prayer works: I will just hold God hostage with my disdain. 

Contentment feels like masking a symptom.  How will I convince God I’m in pain unless I wince?

I think my real problem with contentment is that it feels like lying.  It feels like saying “I’m ok.” when I’m not.  It sounds like hollow smiles and qualified statements.  “Yes my husband was shot, but the play had some good moments.”

And more than saying “I’m ok.” out loud, contentment feels like looking at a situation that is hard and painful and saying that is ok or not a problem.

Instead of pretending, I just want to pause a moment to grieve.  What my family deals with is hard.  And I am not ok with it. Though just as soon as I write that sentence I immediately follow up in my head with “No, I’m ok! I’m ok!”

I suppose I just don’t want to have to “be ok” all the time.  I want to break for a moment.  I want to be weak and weepy for a moment.  I want to put away my brave face for a moment

I want to, in that moment, ask God “Why?”  “Why won’t You fix him?”  Because even though I might make up reasons for my friends in order to make myself seem spiritual and wise, I still can’t see why God doesn’t heal my husband. So I ask God, “Is it ok to ask You why?  You’re my God, aren’t You?  You tell me to come to You boldly, right?  I’ve prayed to You and sung to You since I was a child.  You’ve held my hand and held me together more times than I can count.  I have wept on Your lap.  You’ve seen the real unpolished me, so I can’t lie to You: I don’t see You in this.  I don’t understand You here.  We’re broken.  Don’t you see?  Are You listening?”

And then I duck because this is when I expect God to smite me.  I always expect the “Where were you when I formed the world?” speech from Job.  What more often happens, though, is the baked bread and still small voice from Elijah (1 Kings 19:2-12), or the 70 helpers that the Lord gave to Moses in response to his desperate prayer (Numbers 11:10-29). Because my dear sweet Lord is always gracious with the question of “Why?” He hears the wounds louder than the words.

So I went to His word with my contentment problem, and the spirit led me to Philippians 4:12:

“I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound.  In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.”

I read this and thought “Wait, what’s the secret?  Is he gonna tell us the secret?”  And the next verse is Philippians 4:13:

“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

All these years I felt like contentment was a mask that I put on, a way of phrasing my situation. Someone asks how I am doing, and if I’m “being content” I won’t complain too much, or if I do I’ll follow it up with a few statements of how we have a lot to be thankful for or that catch-all “God is good.”  So I don’t sound too broken or too needy.  Or if a sad situation arises or a sad thought pops into my head, then contentment is to say “Never mind, I’m ok.”

But this is all wrong.  Contentment boils down to two words:  God help.

God doesn’t mind if I am broken or needy. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says,

“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Contentment is not lying about my situation, but being painfully honest about my situation to myself and to my God.  It is to realize my need, where I stop, where I cannot press forward, and to commit that to the Lord.  It’s not taking a sad thought of my situation and saying, “I’ll push that out of my head. I’m ok.”  It’s turning those sad thoughts to prayers and saying, “I hurt, help.”  “I ache, Lord.” “I need you.”

So what do I do with the feeling that I need to convince God of my grief? The story of Hagar reminds me that the Lord needs no convincing.

When Abraham’s slave wife Hagar conceived his child, she incurred the jealousy of his rightful wife Sarah.  Because Sarah made her life miserable, Hagar took her son and ran away into the wilderness.  Needless to say things were pretty rough in the wilderness, and Hagar feared that her son will die. When she was at her lowest an Angel of the Lord came to her and gently asked her where she was going.  This scene always reminds me of a police officer who, when seeing a little kid on the side of the road with a suitcase, sits down next to him on the curb and says, “Where ya going, Buddy?”

“And He said, ‘Hagar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going?’”  (Genesis 16:8)

She tells the Lord her woes and He tells her that her son will live and become a mighty man and that she should go back to Abraham’s home.  And then Hagar utters my favorite name for the Lord.

“So called the name of the Lord who spoke to her ‘You are the God of seeing’ for she said, ‘Truly here I have seen Him who looks after me.  Therefore, the well was called Beer-lahai-roi’ (translated the well of the Living One who sees me).”(Genesis 16:13 -14a)

I don’t need to wince or grumble or shake my fist because I serve the Living One who sees me. No one, and I mean no one, knows how I hurt better than He does. He sees. He sees.

Up above, I also mentioned how I often feel that if I don’t complain about vanilla, then why would anyone ever give me chocolate?  But instead the Bible asks, “What earthly father would give his child a stone when he asks for bread?”  This passage goes on to say “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:11)

James 1:17 also echoes this idea:

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

The Lord is good.  I know this.  This truth is written somewhere on the foundations of my heart that circumstance has not yet shaken.  Because I don’t need to look far to see evidence of that truth.  Even in the struggle of my husband’s illness, our lives are still filled with wonderful blessings.  We have a beautiful child who loves to play with her daddy.  My husband and I have a blast together watching our silly nerdy shows that no one else would think are interesting.  We are surrounded by loving, supportive family and friends.  I have mentioned that not a lot of people can understand what it is like to live with this illness, but many people have bent over backwards trying to.

So then my conclusion is this: contentment isn’t something we do.  Contentment is a byproduct of admitting that I am not ok, God sees this, and He is good.

I think that is something I can rest in… without pouting.