Content when not Comfortable

There was a time in my teen years when I decided to become a professional actress. I spent every Sunday for two years taking a three hour acting workshop. I drove two and a half hours to L.A once a week for auditions and two and a half hours back the next day for call-backs. I practiced the same monologues twenty times a day and watched movies with sub-titles so I could read them like scripts.

Thankfully, God turned me in a different direction before my career could really take off, but there are a few things I retained from my tireless hours of training. One of which is the anatomy of the commercial.

The way the advertisement works is it first presents a problem, then it explains the solution to that problem. Then it presents you with a thing that will lead to the solution of the problem. You’re hungry and in a hurry. You need food quickly. Nuke a Hotpocket and get in the car. You are ugly so nobody loves you. You need to be pretty to be loved. Buy acne burning acid solution.

If you consider that there are approximately six commercials every fifteen minutes during a standard television program, and if you consider how much TV the average person watches, our culture really is drowning in a constant bombardment of the idea that we lack, we want, we get. Contentment would mean people would be satisfied with things as they are. Contentment would be the downfall of the economy.

Commercials aren’t the only army battling our contentment. Weather you like TV, film, books, theater, fashion magazines, or scenic drives through fancy neighborhoods, you are also being willingly assaulted with nearly impossible scenarios to which we compare our lives and come out again lacking, wanting, but this time, not quite getting. Because we are so immersed though in the idea of being able to purchase our solutions and fast-fixes to happiness, there is a very strong idea at work that things should be good. Things should be what we would call fair. We should have the American Dream. We should never want without receiving. And that is simply not realistic. When we compare our lives to the advertised ideal, the happy ending, or the post-solution scenario, we will come up short. Which is when we start questioning the bit God has given us to work with and when we become uncomfortable. 

Lately I am struggling with contentment. This is odd for me because, usually, I am a pretty satisfied lady. I have a loving and godly husband, which is more than most women will ever have. I have beautiful little boy. I have true and loyal friends. I have pretty much what I always wanted. Pretty much, but not exactly.

Obedience to God has lead my husband and I to some less-than-ideal circumstances. They are less than secure. Less than comfortable.  You see, most of the time, I can look at where we are and see what God is doing in our lives, what he is teaching us, and how it is causing us to grow. Most of the time I can see how he has provided perfectly for us and how relying on him has worked out.

That’s most of the time. But that’s not today. Today I have the virus of comparison which is making me uncomfortable. I see people around me at the dawn of their marriages, parenthood, college years, and I think “what if we had done things like that?”. I imagine the steps we took that didn’t make sense, that lead us to a place that was uncomfortable, the steps that were unquestionably what God meant for us to do, and my discomfort begins to decay into discontentment.

Paul wrote to the Philippians that he knew how to be content in all circumstances. He had been rich and he had been poor, but it didn’t matter. The secret to contentment, he wrote, was Christ who gave him strength to do ALL things.

My situation isn’t comfortable. In fact, it’s downright uncomfortable. It’s frustrating and painful and occasionally depressing. But, for some reason, God has not called my husband and I to comfort. He has, however, called us to contentment. Because, honestly, we could have the house in the suburbs with the pool and the big oak tree. We could have family vacations to Disneyland every year and eat sushi prepared by a private chef every night. And there would still be something to tell me that my life isn’t good enough. God hardly ever calls us to be comfortable because, really, comfort is just an illusion, something we chase after but never really reach. This is still a fallen world. Pain and fear will never stop being realities so, unfortunately, the best we can hold on to is contentment.

Maybe soon my husband and I will have a little house of our own, and maybe money and basic necessities won’t require so much thought. Maybe he will have a job that he loves and I will be able to raise the kids and write without feeling like I should be doing something more productive. But maybe not. Maybe the reward for our obedience will come in the next life and not this one. Maybe the choices God has made for me will not make sense until I can get to Heaven and ask him what the heck he was thinking. Does that mean that I will sacrifice my joy to the comparisons wishing I had it differently? I could choose that option, certainly. But how miserable an existence.

Christ has equipped me with the strength to do all things. To endure all that he has called me to and set before me. I have the strength. I just need to use it. I need to listen to him when he whispers “you’re doing just fine” while a million other voices are screaming all the things they think I need in order to be happy. It’s not necessary for me to be in comfortable circumstances. But it is necessary for me, and for my husband and son, that I be content. Christ promises that I have all I need. I’ll choose to believe him even if Cover Girl, JC Penny, Jenny Craig, and “Leave it to Beaver” insist otherwise.