For I have learned to be content...maybe this time

"Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am."  Philippians 4: 11-13, The Message

Contentment. It's my constant struggle. I find myself daily, wanting. Wanting a new something, wanting a different job, wanting a relationship, wanting a family, wanting a new place to live. Every single time I have let the want overtake my contentment, I have paid a price. In December, I paid an actual price for allowing my want to have its day.

My kitchen/office at Christmas

I live in a small apartment above a garage. It's cute, and cozy and other than the fact that I don't have a stove and I have to combine living spaces (office/kitchen, living room/bedroom) it's really quite lovely. Here, I am under the watch-care of one of the kindest and most caring families a person could ask to be near. Compared to many, many people, it's a palace. I am blessed. But, in my head and heart at times, I don't find myself blessed. I find myself comparing it to my dream house. I get caught up in thinking about how old I am and what the world says I should have. "Chris, you're nearly 50, shouldn't you have your own place by now? Something you can call your own?" my Wormwood whispers in my ear. "Think how different your life would be if you had your own place. If you were closer to downtown. If you had a writing and music space, you would be so much more creative."  (It should be said that this isn't the first time this year I've thought about moving. Earlier in the year, I was inches away from moving to Wilmington, NC.  Thankfully, the Lord closed that door for me. My portable job wasn't portable enough to move there. When the time is right, the door will open, or perhaps it won't.) 

This is not the home, but it's what it looked like in my head.

Off to the real estate websites I went, armed with unrealistic expectations of what I wanted and what I could really afford. In the past, when this discontent came my way, I wouldn't find anything. This time, I found two places.  Surely, this was the Lord. One was an apartment above a store on Princess Anne Street and one was an apartment in what was the old Maury School. The centrality of the building and the shiny finishes of the apartment in the school grabbed me. I put down a deposit and filled out an application.  Almost immediately, I started to panic. For the cost, the space wasn't all that different from where I live. It was a studio apartment with little delineation in living space. Was it really worth it? If I had just listened to the Lord at that moment! I was determined, it was time to move on. I went back to my websites and found a house, for the same amount. A house. My dream. This was definitely a gift from God. He knew my heart, this was the thing that would make me happy, having my own space. Once again, God tried to put up a barrier, the agent didn't want to move my deposit. I was yet determined. I made it happen. I went to see the house, and even though it was old, it was quaint, and more space than I could have dreamed of. I knew it would be tight financially, but it was time to move forward. I could make this happen. I signed the lease and put down the first month's rent. 

It was then that full fledged panic set in. I was in way over my head. The rent amount would take up a high percentage of my paycheck, and there were utilities on top of that. The numbers, which I only ran until AFTER I signed the lease, weren't adding up. I am not a person who doesn't sleep. I didn't sleep a wink that night. I am not a person who feels anxiety, even when I was diagnosed with cancer, I didn't feel the panic like I did looking at those numbers. My blood pressure went through the roof. The only thing that calmed me even slightly was assurance of God giving me Jeremiah 29:11-13, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me an come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart."  I cried a lot. I prayed a lot. I must have scared poor Ellie as I stood in the Glasgow's kitchen in the midst of a panic attack crying and asking Sharon if they had plans for my apartment yet. Thankfully, they had promised it to no one. I decided the best thing to do was to write the woman who owned the house and ask to be let out of the lease. I would just be honest with her about my situation. Surely, she would have mercy. 

She did, sort of. She let me out of the lease. She kept all that money. I thought for certain that God would spare me that. Not so much. Now, I live with the consequences of responding to my lack of contentment instead of resting in the place that Lord has me. There is no need to feel too sorry for me, but if you know someone who needs guitar lessons, you could send them my way. ;-)

I don't mean we shouldn't move forward in life, have goals, or even want things. I am not saying even that obstacles are signs that God is not in it. If that were the case, the Emancipation Proclamation would never had been passed, polio would never had been cured, and we never would have landed on the moon. I do mean we must be certain that it's really what God wants for us and not just the cry of our deceptive hearts. Sometimes, what I think is a step forward in faith, is a lunge for something I want that God doesn't want for me at the moment. He may allow doors to be opened that I shouldn't walk through to remind me that my contentment doesn't come from that person or thing or place, it comes from Him and only Him. That's why God tells us to test all things that come our way. Only if I had actually done what I know I should have.

Maybe, I've learned this lesson this time. You see, it's not the first time that God has had to remind me the hard way that my contentment comes only from Him. I have a tendency to fall off the rails in this area. Hopefully, it makes me more empathetic to those who fall in this and other areas. I read this verse this morning, and it's my prayer for today. 2 Corinthians 1:12, "For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you."