When Discontentment is a Mercy
I felt weird all day.
Sluggish, easily annoyed, frustrated and listless.Which was weird, because it had been, by all the usual markers, a really good day. I should have been high off a string of recent successes.Instead, I was…disgruntled.I’m not usually very good at dealing with emotions (especially my own), but I had just enough wisdom scraped together from everything my Momma told me to know that I needed to figure out what was going on.The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the best word to describe my feelings wasn’t just “annoyed,” but something a lot more telling: discontent.Which is still a weird feeling to be having on a really good day, right?I had written some things I was proud of, I’d bumped into a few unexpected opportunities, and a few pieces I had written had been really well received by people I respect. In my little world, these were big wins.But in all His grace and goodness, those big wins weren’t enough.
What an incredible mercy of my God, that He doesn’t let me find contentment in anything but Him.
What an undeserved gift He was giving me that day, to prevent me from once again finding all my joy and identity and contentment in some fleeting moment of earthly success.Because for the first time in a long time, I ran head-first into an age-old truth: it will never be enough.That string of successes would never be long enough, the praise would never be strong enough, the “wins” never big enough.It will never be enough.I know this on some level, but I get easily tricked into believing that “it will never be enough” is only true once I’ve reached some arbitrary standard. Until then, I’m just being practical, taking the necessary steps to get where I need to be. Once I get there, anything extra “won’t ever be enough” and I’ll need to trust God. But until then, I’m just being realistic.
Nope. At every stage and every level, it will never be enough.
I know this, the same way I know “Jesus loves me” but often fail to live like it. But unlike every other time this reality smacked me in the face, I realized what a truly incredible gift it is.God could let me find contentment in these petty and eternally insignificant things. He could let me pursue them, unhindered by the nagging suspicion that there’s something more out there. He could let the wins be hugely satisfying for longer than a moment. He could let human approval and applause fill that gaping hole in my soul.But what an undeserved mercy is this, that God has made us to be unsatisfied with anything less than Himself. What a tragedy it would be if I actually found complete and full contentment when I achieve trivial successes or reach arbitrary standards.