What if Being “Content” is Ruining Your Life?

What if the biggest thing getting in the way of the life you want to live, and maybe even the life you were made to live, is the sense that what you have is “good enough”? What if being “content” is ruining your story?

About five years ago, I started feeling restless.

I had been out of grad school for almost two years, and was working a full-time job that paid well. I lived in a great apartment with a dear friend who loved to run and cook and entertain as much as I did, and our co-existence was pleasant and easy. My family lived close and I would often join my parents for dinner or meet my sister for coffee or pedicures or shopping. I had everything I needed and then some.

So I felt a searing guilt every time I allowed myself to feel the way I was really feeling — like this wasn’t what I wanted.

Each time the feeling came up, I would push it back down, reasoning with myself that people were desperate for jobs like mine, for cars like mine, for lives like mine. Stop complaining and just be thankful, I would tell myself silently, which would help make it through a few more days or weeks before the feeling would come up again, and the cycle would continue.

I never considered my discontent might be trying to tell me something.

I was talking to a dear friend the other day and she was telling me about how she’s been thinking of moving on from her “good enough” job for a long time. She’s been feeling underwhelmed about it, like it doesn’t challenge her the way she wishes it would, and like there is something better out there for her. But before she could even finish saying the thought out loud, she started backpedaling.

“I shouldn’t complain,” she said. “I have a good job and it affords me all kinds of luxuries I wouldn’t have otherwise.”

What is it that makes us feel so guilty for wanting something better?

For me, as a Christian, there is always this pressing reminder I’m supposed to be “content in all circumstances” (Philippians 4:12) and a fear that my inability to do so reflects some sort of moral or spiritual failure. If I just read my Bible more, or prayed more, or was more disciplined with my thought life, I wouldn’t have such a hard time being content. That’s what I tell myself.

And so I drag myself through life, stomping out desire every time it tries to rear its ugly head, but the more I do that, the more numb I feel, and the more I question how on earth this could be the “abundant life” Jesus promised.

Is there any chance being “content” doesn’t look like we think it does?

My sense this is the case comes from personal experience. A few years back, while I was living comfortable life I was describing above, I was reading through the gospels and was captured in a whole new way by the story of the Rich Young Ruler, a story I had read a hundred times before. A wealthy man comes to Jesus and asks, “What can I do to experience the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus tells him to go and sell all of his stuff, and give the money away to the poor.

My whole life I had read this story as a nice analogy for what happens when rich people forget they need God. But I hadn’t ever considered I might be the rich person, hadn’t thought about how I might be too attached to my stuff, and hadn’t never pondered, even for a second, that Jesus would ever ask me to literally give anything away.

But as I read I was moved by how Jesus never tried to deter the Young Man from wanting what he wanted (The Kingdom of Heaven); he just assured him that, in order to get it, he was going to have to give up everything.

So, I decided to take the story literally.

I quit my job, moved out of my apartment, sold all of my stuff, and spent the next few years of my life chasing what I wanted, going without the luxuries I used to enjoy. I wrote a whole book about my experience, so it’s a lot to explain in single blog post, but the thing that confounded me most about the whole thing was how choosing to admit my life was not “good enough” was the path that ultimately led me to contentment.

In fact, it wasn’t until I finally started to admit I didn’t have what I really wanted, until I let go of the many things that were getting in my way, that I began to understand what Paul really meant when he said: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” (Philippians 4:12)

• First of all, being content didn’t mean I never wanted anything. In fact, just the opposite. It meant admitting the fullness of my desire, and offering it up as a sacrifice, along with all of my physical stuff.

• Second, I learned my physical stuff was not disconnected from my spiritual and emotional life. We can’t hang on to very many things at once (we only have two hands) and having too many physical possessions was literally keeping me from enjoying the spiritual blessings I craved.

• Third, I learned to pay close attention to the things I wanted, because they were always telling me something. As long as I was willing to ask myself why I wanted what I wanted, my wants were very useful. I usually found what I really wanted, buried miles beneath the surface (often I discovered I already had it, or had access to it).

• Finally, I learned that trying to be “content” by talking myself out of wanting things I wanted was a fruitless effort, like trying to get a beach ball to disappear by holding it under the surface of water. It works for awhile, but the minute you let go, or quit paying attention, it comes the surface with force.

When you look up “content” in the dictionary, the first definition reads, “desiring no more than what one has, satisfied.” But the second definition reads, “ready to accept or acquiesce, willing.” And for me, this is a more helpful definition of what it looks like to be content in all of my circumstances.

My life is not “good enough.” It never will be until I get to heaven. But I am ready to accept what comes to me, to acquiesce, to give up things that won’t satisfy me forever because I know there is one thing that will.

What if Being “Content” is Ruining Your Life? is a post from: Storyline Blog