Courageous Contentment

I was sitting on my bed, a puddle of tears, emotions spilling out like rivers overflowing their banks after a heavy storm.

It was mothers day.

I was coming to the end of month 6 of one of the hardest seasons of my life. Within the span of 4 months, I welcomed our third child, launched a church location with my husband, experienced a family divorce, moved to our third home in three years, and found out my mom was dying from stage four cancer two weeks before she passed.

I didn’t feel traumatized, depressed, or angry.

I felt emotionally exhausted, mentally spent, and a little crazy. (Hormones are so real!)

My world, the day to day rhythm, felt like music out of sync with a chaotic, unpredictable beat.

Accompanying this confusing rhythm were self-deprecating mental lyrics reserved only for the battlefield in my mind:

“You’re fine—just pull it together.”

“You can do everything you’re doing and more, you just have to be better.”

“You just need more discipline.”

“You need more of what you really want—all the things you’re missing are the issue.”

“What’s wrong with you? A lot, actually. Fix it.”

I found myself grasping for stability. I desperately wanted bone deep peace, rest in the depths of my soul, and burdens of unrealistic perfectionism lifted from my mind—those burdens that made me strive, made me blind to what I had, made me so unsatisfied.

I simply wanted to be happy exactly where I was with what I had. Although I knew the truth, it felt out of reach. No matter what I changed or how disciplined I tried to be, it wasn’t enough and the emotions weren’t changing…until this day.

On this Mother’s day, as I sat crying, feeling overwhelmed by guilt that I just wanted to be alone, I heard Him speak.

It was like a lifeline sinking into the depths of my ocean of despair: “You can have contentment or control, but you can’t have both.”

It wasn’t one of those mysteries that needed to be unraveled or a puzzle that needed to be put together. I felt pulled out of the depths, straight up for air. I knew this was my answer.

What I desperately desired, what I needed, was contentment. What I was wrapped up in, bound by, was control.

The harder life became one situation after another and the more chaotic my emotions felt, the more I tried to assert control. I sat in the seat of captain bound to navigate my way through a storm I was never commissioned to lead myself through. I believed that I could direct the course of my life to a place of peace, but I couldn’t.

Here, in that whisper, I understood.

The more I tried to control my life and chase the end results I wanted, the further I moved away from true contentment.

Let go and let God can sound so cliche, but this day it was revelation to my soul. I couldn’t control my own life and experience true contentment. God was in control, but I had to fully embrace that truth and make a choice to live it out to experience the rest He offers in that place.

This moment began a journey of letting go of control and fully trusting that my obedience would be the only pathway to fulfilled purpose. It began a journey that moved me from chasing my purpose and dreams into believing that my yes to Him was enough for everything.

In the midst of letting go and releasing control, I found that resting came easier, discipline was a delight, and my dreams for my life began to change.

I found contentment with my pace, gratitude for my every day, and perspective that expanded my eyes to see beyond where I was, but enlightened where I had been and gave me vision for where I was going.

When I studied the word contentment, I found it historically had been defined as “satisfaction of a claim or debt.”

In asking me to release control and offering me contentment, God was actually satisfying the claim of discontentment and the debt of unquenchable desire on my life.

Now, on the other side of this journey, but still walking it out, I see so many people in this fight.

They’re dissatisfied, frustrated, and overwhelmed. They’re discontent, but desperately seeking that place of happiness and satisfaction.

I want to sit down with them [or you] over coffee and say I can see it on you—worn down by striving, weary with pain, almost overcome just by life. But, I’ve been there, and I can see the end.

The end of this journey comes when you give up. Give up trying to make things happen. Give up trying to compete with someone else’s pace. Give up doing more, being more, posting more, sharing more, having more, making more, believing you’re owed more. Just give up control, be still, obey, and believe.

Here, in this place, at the end of you and all you can do, contentment can bloom.

Here, in this place, God can be who He has always been and do what only He can do.

Trust me, contentment with God is so much better than staying in control.