contentment – being fully present in the reality of your story while fully trusting the One who has authored it.
this month i live in a rural community outside of manzini, swaziland.
we work daily with school aged children (3-12 years old), many of whom have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS or have it themselves.
often i come home smelling like the kids i’ve held all day. i’ll spare you the details.
i live in a small house, maybe 950 square feet, with 17 other women.
we don’t have running water anywhere on our property, although we do have a large water tank that fills as the rain water from our roof is funneled down the gutters and into the tank.
we bathe in buckets and wash our clothes in buckets and do our dishes in buckets.
we have an outhouse in the backyard. i’ll spare you the details.
our tiny kitchen (where we’ve made some incredible meals) has no oven or sink, just a couple gas burners.
we try to keep food on shelves in the cupboard to avoid rats, to avoid typhoid.
we don’t have beds but sleep lined up on the concrete floor on our sleeping mats.
there isn’t much space to be alone which can be hard for someone who loves alone time.
as i sit reading and writing this morning, katrina is on my left and melanie on my right. if i look up i can see kylie and sarah and chelsea and patty and molly. we’re in our living room that’s about as big as my bedroom at home. it’s 6am and we’re all having our “alone” time, reading and journaling and praying, drinking instant coffee.
i don’t say all of this to make my life sound hard or miserable, because it’s certainly not. i preface with these facts because despite my circumstances, this month has been marked with contentment.
i’ve known that contentment is not an “if, then” statement. you know, if such and such happens, then i’ll be content. if my dreams come true, then i’ll be really truly happy. but that’s not how it works. contentment, by definition stands on it’s own. either you are or you aren’t. and in my life i haven’t been. i don’t know if i ever have been.
i think i’ve seen fleeting glimpses of it – had short-lived moments of what it is to be content. but my life is pretty consistently motivated by what should have been or what is going to be. i rehash over and over the things i should have done, the chances i should have taken, the ways i dropped the ball. i make lists upon lists of what i’m going to do, the chances i’m going to take, all the ways i’m going to be a better me. and for what? to shame myself into a better existence? who knows.
a lesson that God has been gently but repeatedly teaching me this year is the value of living fully present in the reality of my story. what is happening right now and who am i in the face of that? am i content and thriving? or am i merely surviving, attempting to propel myself forward and out of my current experience, good or bad.
in the good comes the temptation to desire more. there are those shining moments, the times in life where you swear the world is right and nothing can take away from the success or rightness of that moment. but in a flash your mind wanders forward and wonders how long it will last and what you can do to sustain this rightness with the world, or better yet, how you can improve it. imagine no-showing to your birthday party to spend the whole day planning exactly how the next year can be even better. we throw away the celebration of today so we might better control tomorrow’s celebration, which sadly has no assurance of arrival. contentment is true celebration in the moments of joy.
in the bad comes the temptation of distrust. i don’t think being content means you can’t cry on bad days. i think being content gives us permission to cry harder. it doesn’t take away from the broad scope of emotions we were all created to have; grieving doesn’t invalidate trust. God is not overwhelmed or put off by our grief. His character bears up to our questions and heartache. being fully present in the reality of your story means grieving losses with your whole heart in the knowledge that your pain is valid and your cries are heard, but also acknowledging what God can do with that hurt. my journey of faith towards trusting God has come almost entirely through pain – and through watching God show up in the chaos and change that life brings. contentment is trust in the face of your pain.
and while i have not arrived at some finish line of contentment, and my proclivity for controlling every aspect of my life makes all to common appearances, i can say that i’ve tasted contentment. and it’s so much sweeter than control. i’m happier here than i’ve been in months. maybe part of it has to do with a new found peace i’ve acquired. i might even call it contentment. on the other side of all my questioning, i’ve found a trust in the Lord unlike i’ve ever known. i wake up in the morning with thank you on my lips and fall asleep at night, exhausted but whispering the same thank you. sometimes i have days like yesterday – full of fun and laughter with the women i live with and the children we work with. sometimes i don’t even care that someone left their dirty dishes for me to clean up or i have to wait in a 2 hour line to bathe in a bucket. and then sometimes i have days where i’m certain that it’s absolutely absurd to cram this many adult women in a house and if i have to clean up the living room one more time i’m going to quit the world race and go home. but at the beginning and end of every day, there’s always thank you. i don’t want to be anywhere else with anyone else. this month has been marked with contentment.
“when life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.” –shauna niequist
