I Choose to Be Content

And yeah, it's a choice

It’s easy to be restless. It’s easy to let your eyes settled on what someone else has and covet it, weighing it against what you are holding and finding that old, familiar thing less than. It’s easy to take your husband for granted, to wish your kids were more like hers, to think that most of your problems would be solved by a new house in a new state with a new set of circumstances and a fresh, new setting.

Being content? That’s so much harder.

So much harder to see others with more and still say, “what I have is enough.” So much harder to accept that maybe what’s best for someone else isn’t what’s best for you, and that your role in bringing glory to Jesus might just look like struggling under a weight you would rather not carry, but doing it with a joy that can only point to Christ.

I choose to be content. Not perfectly. Not without stumbling. But every day, I purpose to remember that what I have was given to me by a sovereign Father who has called His plans for me good.

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.—1 Corinthians 7:17

God decided that I should be female. That I would have a mother who left an imprint on me that would echo hard in the places that should have been soft, but also that I would have a Mamaw whose voice would speak Jesus into that darkness. That I would burn wild in my teens and find my husband just in time to give me a safe harbor where I could finally drag the anchor of my faith along a rocky bottom, waiting for it to take hold. He decided I should birth babies, and foster others, praying over some I pressed back into the hands of their scarred families with a trust not in them, but in Him alone. That I should adopt others, grafting them into the gnarled and beautiful trunk of an ever-growing, twisted tree. That I should grow in years but not dollars, that I should labor, invisible, alongside a man whose heart is to call others to their own walk with Jesus no matter the cost.

This is my life.

I could strive. I could yearn. I could cast my eyes at the why and the how of others and feel that my lot has been unnecessarily lean.

I choose to be content.

Every day.

Every day, I wake up and trust that whatever comes is from His hand. And every day, He is faithful. Even when the waves of uncertainty threaten to drag me under— how will the bill be paid? how will I meet this child where he is?— Jesus holds me fast. He takes my feeble prayers for contentment and makes them so, not for my comfort but for His glory.

But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.—1 Timothy 6: 6-8

I look for the great gain, and I feel it, minute by minute. The relief of knowing that it’s not upon me to keep this ship afloat, that I don’t have to bear up under anything Christ Himself has not already carried. The joy in seeing that I am loved, wanted, provided for, that I can rest in those good and perfect plans decided in advance, whatever it looks like to the eyes of man.

I choose to be content. Do you?

In Christ,

Heather