The Reward for Contentment

Or (Un)Helpful Things Married People Say

For a while, the advice I received most regarding being single (and, often, leading a worship team) was, "I've found that it wasn't until I stopped wanting something that I got it." Now, well meaning as this advice is, it puts the potential follower (meaning, of course, me) in quite the conundrum. If I want it, then I won't get it. So the logical conclusion is to stop wanting it. But if I intentionally stop wanting something simply to get it, don't I still want it? And outside of the unfortunate damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don't repercussions of this advice, it never quite sat right with me as far as my loving, faithful, promise-fulfilling God goes. Why would a God that loves me and knows what's best for me always only give me what I don't want? The problem I have with this advice, as I will explain later, is mostly in the phrasing, not the concept.

The most recent thing married couples (specifically married women with young kids) have repeated to me has been: "Enjoy being single while it lasts." No matter what season of life you're in, hearing this, again, well-meant advice is not something you want to hear if you are at all dissatisfied with said season.

When I've expressed this annoyance to other married couples (who would say no such thing), most have tried to sway my thinking by delineating all the downsides of married life or child rearing. In my current life season and state of mind this is quite unhelpful. To an outsider who so desperately wants to be in, even the worst looks golden.

But there is no golden season.

There is no season of life where everything finally feels like it all fits. (Which, if you think about it, is kind of blessing in disguise. If there were such a season, life would pretty much suck once that season was over and you still had to keep on living.) For me personally, I feel like my hypothetical "golden" season is when I have my first baby (probably when the baby's around 6 months old or so). But I'm sure when I get there, I'll miss getting 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep or deciding I don't want to cook dinner and eating carrots instead or being (at least somewhat) guaranteed a block of undisturbed time with my husband.

But even that "golden" season won't be golden if I don't learn to make this season a golden season. Living every season the way I am inclined means even my hypothetical golden season would be almost entirely missed by wishing for when my first kid can walk or use the toilet or dress herself or, on the other end, looking forward to my second kid and having a baby again. (This is all beginning to sound a little like Click to me.)

Instead of there being no golden season, what if every season is a golden season?

See, the heart of the first piece of advice is contentment. But getting what you want isn't the reward for contentment. Contentment is the reward for contentment. Once you truly get to that place where you are content (cynically put in the previous advice as "not wanting it anymore"), whether you get it or not doesn't matter. Because you are content.

So, what is the lesson in this?

For single people, learn to make every season a golden season.

For married people, perhaps this is the advice best offered to single people (or anyone for that matter):

Enjoy the season God has you in

because if you spend your life

running ahead of Him,

even if you get what you think you want

you will never enjoy it.

Like a Zipper

"What if things are actually falling into place?"

This is a recurring question in my conversations with God as of late. This familiar conversation ("I feel like everything's falling apart." "What if it's actually falling into place?" "Well, maybe I'd rather have it actually fall apart so I'd feel better.") has taken place multiple times over the last month or so. It's a very small picture of the circular pattern of thought that's been hamster-wheeling through my head about God's perspective and free will versus predestination.

When I was (much) younger, I spent a good deal of time on a message board community based on the audio series Adventures in Odyssey. My favorite board was the debate board (which really shouldn't surprise anybody that knew me between the ages of let's say 11-17 or so). I distinctly remember the topic of predestination coming up a handful of times and a few of them got particularly ugly. I've been fascinated with the tension of this discussion ever since. Not because I want to explain it, but because the very nature of its inexplicability speaks something very special to me about the sovereignty and mystery of God.

For another (seemingly unrelated) piece of the puzzle, I go through seasons where I have a passion to wrestle in prayer. Unfortunately (or not?), my heart is usually not in praying for the nations or the lost (yet), but for the people in my life and their life situations (as well as my own). Last night, as I was writing a list of the things that are currently on my heart, I started to muse on the idea of wrestling in prayer. I know two seemingly contradictory facts: (1) God is sovereign and all-powerful; (2) He invites us to participate with Him in prayer.

Now, how can our prayers change anything when God has all the power to do whatever He wants and knows exactly what's going to happen? His plan can't depend on the participation of people with free will because then He would cease to be all powerful, given that the plan would fall apart if the free will of the people didn't line up with His (sin?). I can feel my brain getting dizzy even as I start this spiral of thought.

In any event, however it works, whatever the reason, I do believe that God hears our prayers and that persistent prayer can change things. How? I don't know. Maybe because God "foreknew" that a particular person was going to pray for a particular thing and accounted for it in His plan. But what if that person decided not to pray that thing for whatever reason that day? Would it change God's plan? No, because God would know the person wasn't going to pray it. This, again, is where my brain starts hurting and I fall back into blissful dependence on worshiping a God surrounded by "clouds and thick darkness" (Psalm 97:2).

What does this have to do with my dialogue with God (or a zipper!)? I feel like things are falling apart. But my sovereign, mysterious God knows exactly what's happening. He can see from the beginning of my life clear through to the end and knows with complete clarity and infinite wisdom what pieces are falling where and how close (or far) they are to (or from) where they are supposed to be. What if when I felt most like everything was falling into place it really was the furthest from where it was supposed to be? What if when things feel least peaceful or most tumultuous they're actually much closer to where they are supposed to be? (I'm not trying to say at all that this is a standard for all situations or all individuals, though there is a prevailing truth that God is closest to the broken and weak, so maybe I'm not as far off as I think I might be.)

God hardened Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 10:1, which is remarkable to me because God even gave Moses a reason why He was doing something that seemed a lot more like "falling part" than "coming together"). God gave Daniel favor in the eyes of his superiors (Daniel 1:9). God can change the hearts of people. What God wants done, He will make happen. Does that mean I believe that every person that doesn't do what I think they should has had their heart hardened by God? No. Not at all. Does it mean that I think every time I have favor with someone God has divinely and miraculously moved? No. That leans a little too much towards the God is to us as we are to Sims argument for my taste. But I do very much like the idea that God has the power to change people's hearts and will exert that power if necessary. It makes it much easier for me to believe that I'm actually in the middle of a plan that is going somewhere, rather than a forgotten afterthought.

So what about the zipper? What is a zipper, exactly? Two separate pieces of fabric that have to be precisely lined up (have you ever tried to sew a zipper onto clothes?), shaped properly, and brought together by a third piece. (See where I'm going with this?) While I was praying earlier (yes, that "falling apart" dialogue may have been the origin of this line of thought), I saw a picture of a zipper... working like a zipper should: bringing things together. What if things are actually coming together? What if I'm one of those pieces of fabric--precisely lined up and shaped properly--in the process of being brought into place by a third piece? What if the feeling of everything falling apart is the very real feeling of being stretched and pulled apart from whatever's on the other side of the fabric?

I'd Rather Be an R Than a Z

aka The Embarrassingly Contemplative Thoughts Mandy Has While Playing Words with Friends

I was looking over my letters the other day and thought, "Stupid R. It's not worth anything. Why do we even have Rs. Rs should be struck from the language. I would really hate to be an R, if I were a letter."

Then, I realized....

Rs are really useful and it's often difficult to make words without Rs and other low-scoring letters. This is why they score so low. But think about it . . . Zs are a flash in the pan, one-time-use type of letter. Sure, they score a lot, but their use is very limited and quickly outlived.

I'd much rather be an R.

Day 20: Current Events

Yes, I skipped yesterday. It was somewhat intentional. I got home after midnight and was much too tired to blog and instead fell asleep on the couch.

Quite honestly, I can't think of a single current event that interests me off the top of my head, so I'm going to find a top-10 news stories site and choose one.

...

All right. Really, the only current event that at all piqued my interest was the tornados in Missouri. Because I have friends in Missouri. They were all fine, but after two-and-a-half years of laughing at every single earthquake we have here in California, they finally have tornado stories.

Day 19: A New Home

If I could live anywhere in the world, I would live in Northern Ireland, I think. Somewhere that has ocean nearby, lots of nature and green, lots of rain, and sometimes snow. I loved the more mountainy parts of Oregon I saw, too. But it's so much more exciting to say Northern Ireland.

Truthfully, though, I'd rather live where I live and put up with the heat and dry but have the people in my life than live somewhere rainy and cool and beautiful without them.

So, not terribly long or interesting at all, but all I have to say on the topic.

Day 18: Joys

People make me happy. Rain makes me happy. Snow makes me happy.

These are things about the world that make me happy. Especially people in the rain or snow. Really, people anywhere. Good company in the back of my car is far more fun than being by myself at Disneyland (one of my favorite places). I'd much rather eat a salad with a good group of people than bacon by myself. (Shocking, I know.) Apart from the "Conversations" post on Day 9, I don't have much else to say about what makes me happy.

The challenge of getting to know people and so-called "inclement" weather. That's what makes me happy in the world.

Day 17: Annoyances

Prompt: "Something about the world that annoys you."

If we're speaking strictly of the physical world, I'm annoyed by the fact that I live on a part of it that gets so warm. But that's not really what we're asking.

The thing that gets under my skin the most is bad grammar. Sometimes in speaking (though I'm not frequently around people that often use bad grammar) but primarily in writing. I've recently (as in, in the last hour or two) realized that I get quite annoyed by people that use big words to mask insecurity in writing.

I would far rather read a paragraph comprised entirely of one- and two-syllable words that made grammatical sense than a paragraph filled with lofty-sounding words strung together that make little or no sense.

Now, I'm not without my faults. I would by no means purport to have perfect grammar. (If you like, revisit my 15 facts wherein we discover that for most of my life I misspelled "ridiculous" and to this day consistently misspell "occasionally" [as I just did and had to re-type it, as a matter of fact; but I got it right the second time].)

Grammar pet peeves (in no particular order):

• "Could care less." If you could care less, why bother saying anything? It's like trying to say the water's too cold and instead saying "it could be colder." Or trying to say you really want something and instead saying "I could want it more." Or trying to say that you don't care about something at all and instead saying it would be possible to care less (which, if I'm not mistaken, is actually the case).


• Lie vs. lay. Lay requires a direct object. Lie does not. It's quite simple. If you don't know what a direct object is, imagine the actual thing of which you're speaking in your bed and see if it works. "I am (lying/laying) on the bed." I should be in bed, so it's "lying!". "The hen is (lying/laying) eggs." I'd really rather not go to bed if there are eggs in process of being laid. "Let me (lie/lay) these groceries on the counter." If you leave the groceries in bed, they'll spoil. Bad idea. "Let me (lay/lie) down and rest for a minute." I suppose you can rest anywhere. The floor; your car; inside a dryer*. But truthfully, the best place to lie down and rest is your bed. Which is where I should be. All right, perhaps it doesn't work in every situation. So you should probably ignore my advice and just figure out what a direct object is. But it was a fun ride, no?


• Unknown past participles. "Swum," "drunk," and "woken" are actually really terrible. I'm not going to argue that. But especially the misuse (or lack of use) of "woken" really bothers me. If it hurts you that much to say such an ugly (yet correct) word, just say "awakened." Yes, you sound pretentious. But those are really your only two options. (Unless, of course, you restructure the whole sentence and just take responsibility for the time you awoke and say, "I had gotten out of bed at..." Or you could go with "roused." I think I much prefer that option to any of the aforementioned. One of my friends (to be left unnamed) who has impeccable grammar the majority of the time consistently uses "ran" as the past participle of "to run." It bothers me every time.


• The "I" vs. "Me" debate. I'm so over "I" being used as the object of sentences because so many of us have heard the correction, "Sammy and I want to grow up to be fat and lazy." Really, it's not correct in all situations. If it's the object of a sentence, it's "me". Unless of course, it comes with an unstated conjugation of "to be," most often following a comparison with "than" (e.g., "Cara is far more noxious than I [am]," or "Though Patrick may have well-defined abs, Theodore's noble chin makes him far more attractive than he [is]." Though the latter comes with its own pet peeve....).


• Poorly constructed sentences that leave the listener/reader unclear to what the modifier refers. "Eli bought a cat but then he got hit by a car." The cat or Eli? Should I be panicked or elated? (There's a lot of cat-hating going on in this post; I apologize. I don't hate cats. Specifically. I'm more of an equal-opportunity animal critic.) "Joe went to buy a car, but before he decided to spend the money, he wanted to buy a cup of coffee and a scone, but then he decided it was too expensive." The coffee? The scone? The car? If he thought the scone was too expensive, what business did he have going to buy a car? Or perhaps that was the problem. He was spending so much on a car, he couldn't bear to spend $8 at Starbuck's. But we'll never know will we? (I don't even know and I wrote it.)


• Questions that aren't really questions. "Jim and I were wondering if you and Kate would like to come over for dinner Saturday night." If I were having a bad day**, I might not respond at all to this, honestly. I am that snarky. It doesn't beg a response. In fact, it begs a non-response. If I'm in a bad mood, Jim and Shelley will continue to wonder if Kate and I would like to come to dinner because they have yet to ask. But probably only if it was a really bad day and I didn't particularly care for Jim and Shelley.


• Saying "do you want" instead of "will you please." My answer will almost always be "no" to the former if I feel like it should have been phrased as the latter. Luckily for me and everyone around me, I've learned to keep this gut-response "no" inside my head and respond as a decent human being.

Although, now we've spring-boarded into a whole new world of word choice as opposed to grammar. My final bullet is not so much a grammar issue as it is a communication issue.

There are probably quite a few grammar mistakes hidden within these words. I quite honestly didn't care enough to thoroughly proof-read. There are also probably quite a few personal stylizations (nope, not actually a word) that don't fit into proper grammar rules (I point you to the above statement "I'm so over..."). This is a blog. It was never intended to be an academic paper or a comprehensive grammar manual. It was intended to be a fun (and now, I'm sure, quite terrifying) peak into my head. If you, as a reader, would like to compile a list of all my errors and post them in a comment, feel free.

I may have to buy you a cup of coffee for your efforts.

*If you're a cat, maybe. A suicidal cat.

**I took this opportunity to finally research the past subjunctive conjugation of "to be," because saying "I were" has always felt strange to me. If you don't know what subjunctive is, you probably never learned a foreign language. I didn't even know there was a subjunctive until I learned it in Spanish 2.