Contentment

I stared at the blank index card in front of me. Hmmm . . . what should I write down? What things do I want to learn to be content in?

I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. I was going to write down something that I wanted and didn’t have—and rather than ask God to give me this thing, I was going to ask Him to teach me to be okay with not having it. Yeah, this was not going to be easy.

We had just started up a new session in my girls’ small group, with a new study—Cultivating Contentment. The assignment was to write down (just to keep to ourselves) a few things that we felt discontent about, and would like to see God teach us to be content in. Just weeks before, I had asked the girls to make a list of what He has been teaching them. I took the lists, prayed over them, and noticed a theme among each girl’s items—a desire for contentment. Okay God, well, that’s easy. Contentment it is.  That’s what our group needs.

I knew God had called our group to this study, but I had no idea that this concept was going to be life changing for me.

Content to Be Who I Am

                I tend to be a type A, always- productive, and perfectionistic personality. This is a disaster combo of a personality for someone learning to be content in themself . . . hehe! On the positive side, I’m often trying to grow and get to improve myself in various areas. On the negative side, I often see what I am not, even focus on it, and become easily discouraged.

                A book I’ve pulled alongside as a supplement to our study is Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow. She shares the following quote by a man C.S. Lewis called his mentor:

I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking. (George MacDonald)

                Wow, to be content in who I am is actually acknowledging that I was specially made, and in a way that God delighted in when He thought of how to create me. I think of Psalm 139:14—“I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

My physical appearance, personality, gifts and aptitudes are all an extremely unique combination of exactly the person God wanted when He thought of how to create me. How special! How absolutely endearing!! To think of what was happening in His mind as He began to plan out how to create me! And I want a girl, He said, a small girl with dark hair and eyes, a thoughtful girl, slight melancholic disposition, excited to be in the sun and at the beach, thrilled with language, and music, and the human mind and behavior. And this little girl, I will sing over morning to night. I will delight in her. And I will absolutely enjoy the very unique way I’ve created her. Yeah, that thought overwhelms me.

                Not only did He create my person, but He also created a specific purpose for me. Many things fascinate me, but I’m only called to a few. Yeah, I would like to do everything, but I have limited time, and am only good at some! So, I'm learning to be content in the specific purpose He has called me to, cutting out anything that isn’t directly in my calling, and enjoying seeing and working with the purposes of others around me.

Content With My Past

                This is a hard one. Everything that I grew up with, any hurt done to me, any unfair act, any disadvantage—in that I am to give thanks. I am to acknowledge sovereignty. I am to believe that He works all things together for the good of those who love God. I love You God, but I don’t always love my past. But no, there is nothing lost that He cannot redeem. And I reconcile with my past. What was, was. What continues to hold me, holds me. I cannot quicken my healing faster than He will take me through it. And so I rest. I simply am who I am . . . a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, idiosyncrasies and needs. And my past simply becomes a circumstance as I realize not what I have, literally, or on  my experience resume, makes me anything, but rather who I am becoming as I cling tighter and tighter to Him.

Content With What I Have

Get these two pictures of my experience in Thailand:

One

                My last year in Thailand, I lived at a school, in the dorms, where I taught English to sweet Thai students during the week. I was treated as a super star. The local newspaper came to take my picture as I greeted students at the front school gate. I was given a much higher salary than the other teachers, given gifts from students often and invited to the homes of many of the families. One teacher graciously offered to teach me Thai for free. I met with her daily to go over my Thai workbook, and she often gave me gifts as I improved. I communicated well in Thai and was accepted with warm Thai hospitality. On the weekends, I went to live with a Thai pastor and his family where I was given the best room in the house. Saturdays, we would go shopping in local markets to buy things that were super-cheap. We lived near an absolutely breath-taking mountain where I would ride a motorcycle past streets of tropical plants into town to go tutor at the homes of some of my students. I played piano for our church service on Sunday, and then taught the Bible in English to a small Sunday School of children. After the service, all of us women from the congregation would cook together, laughing in the kitchen, while the men played with the children, then we would all sit down to our Sunday lunch. Sometimes we would take a trip to nearby waterfalls and play and picnic. Sunday afternoons were for naps, and then I would often join the family to go walking around a lake nearby their house in the evening, before they took me back to the school dorms. I felt so taken care of by them, and very connected, and loved being so closely tied in to the Thai language and culture.

Two

                Well, I lived at the school, but I wouldn’t really call it dorms. It was more of a room, with open windows and a door that didn’t lock. There was a small area outside, the bathroom, that had a hole in the ground, and a faucet with a bucket where I would take my cold “showers” every morning at 5:AM. My bed was a piece of board that I tried to layer with some blankets on for softness. There was some electricity that produced a dim nightlight when it got dark, but not enough to read by. My days lasted from greeting students at 6:30am at the gate to teaching classes through 5:30pm. I was the only English teacher, the only white person in town, and so my abilities were needed and I was asked to teach every class at this 1500-student school. Each class consisted of at least 50 students, each of whom did not speak one word in English. My first time to ask them to open their notebooks in Thai, I was met with a roar of laughter. My tone was off and I later found out I had said a bad word. I was encouraged to use a ruler on the hands of students in grade 5 and under, and cried the first time I did. The teacher who taught me Thai, I found out to be a lesbian who was obsessed with me. She stalked me when I went to the markets alone and I was scared to death of her. Her lover, the school’s administrative assistant and extremely jealous, assigned me even extra classes to take away all of my time from learning Thai. My time at the Thai pastor’s house was a relief, but also tiring, as I taught in the villages on Saturday with them, and didn’t really get a break on Sundays. My phone was stolen and I was blamed for being careless with it, and given a phone purse to keep my new phone close to me. A Laos male teacher spread rumors of my behavior with him, and I was approached by many female teachers at the school for being loose. This city was extremely steeped in Spiritism, and it fell heavy every time a holiday came around. I would often sense a spiritual darkness before I even knew the holiday was coming. I got to get on the internet once every two weeks for a few minutes to write an update email. I prayed often, but I felt so alone.

One experience, two pictures. Same circumstances. Different perspectives. No doubt, this was one of the most difficult times in my life. Yet, it was also one of the most growing. I was able to witness daily. The teachers didn’t know or care what I taught in English, so I taught the Bible. Even in my tiredness, I felt strength. I depended on God, and found Him to meet me in multiple supernatural ways. I was forced to speak Thai, and so learned it so quickly, and really understood Thai culture as if I had grown up with it. I also learned how important it was for me to have Christian support around me, and knew if I were to come on the mission field again, I would join a team of solid praying Christians. I knew it was time to leave at the end of the year, but I also knew that  I had been able to be a part of work that would not burn, but was rather eternal. I could not be more thankful for my time in that city.

Coming back to the States, I struggled with reverse-culture shock (common) . . . not understanding how people could enjoy so much, so carelessly, when others around the world had so little. But I learned that just as hard circumstances don’t matter, neither do easy. They are not the point. Paul says that he’s learned to be content in plenty and in need. Contentment is a mindset, not an amount of anything I could have or become, whether a little or a lot. It is an idea of being completely joyful in my God and what He’s given me in life, regardless of what it is.

Hmmm . . . so, I’m still on the journey of contentment. But I’m excited to see where it takes me. Thank You Jesus. Bring me Lord Jesus to a mindset of Christ, whatever that may be.

Another Place

It was one year ago. For some reason, I knew I needed to go running at the bay a mile down from my apartment. A nudging, I guess. As I started out in the cold afternoon, I ran past the Hilton hotel and then down to a big grassy area overlooking Mission Bay. The cloudy sky and sparkling water with geese flying overhead reminded me of a Nicholas Sparks movie. It was beautiful, felt almost romantic! But at the same time, it felt a little bit unreal. I had one of those conversations with God. Not an audible one, but the kind where I felt pretty sure we were talking. One of those moments of deep calling out to deep. What do you want me to do God? If I’m here for a purpose, then what is it?

The red light on the top of the Sky Tower at Sea World was blinking. Look at that light, I heard Him say. As I began to look at the light, I started to become distracted by other runners, moms and dads with children, lovers holding hands, tourists visiting San Diego, fit joggers with their dogs. No, God whispered, YOU look at the light. But God, the world is happening around me, I argued with my Maker. And then He said it. The thing I haven’t forgotten since: “Emily, this is not it. This is not it.”

I will never forget that moment.

On Thursday mornings I am involved in an inductive Bible study at my church on the book of Hebrews. We’ve actually been in the study for over a year now, but with all of the word studies and cross-referencing, we’re only in chapter 9! I’ve learned a thousand things, but one in particular has stuck out to me recently. Hebrews 9 uses words like copy, shadow, symbol to describe how the old testament tabernacle, laws, and covenant was merely a representation of what was to come. The ten commandments and laws on sacrifice were given as a tutor to define (and help restrain) sin, but they were not the fulfillment of the covenant God made with Abraham— a covenant based on HIS own Word and oath, that He would bless Abraham and all nations through him! Or God’s promise and prophesying through Jeremiah and Ezekiel to replace in the hearts of His children their heart of stone with a heart of flesh that His law was written on, and His Spirit put in. The law, sacrifices, and tabernacle were simply a shadow of Christ’s coming!

I was reading C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory yesterday. A chapter that I’ve recently revisited (and still struggle to understand!) is called “Transposition.” The idea of transposition is that what we, as humans, experience in life is merely a taste, a reflection, an image, a symbol or shadow, of what real, REAL, reality is. He tells this story:

A young pregnant woman is imprisoned for a crime. She gives birth to a son and lives there with him her whole life. However, she was an artist and was allowed to bring her paper and pencils into the prison. The son knows nothing of the outside world, but his mother attempts to teach him about it by drawing pictures of mountains and streams, oceans and animals, cities and towns. However, she realizes that her son thinks that these things drawn with her pencil are really made of pencil marks in the outside world. “You mean, these things are not made up of pencil marks?” the son asks his mother. He could not comprehend that there was a bigger reality than what those pencil marks represented. He believed his mother, but he couldn’t comprehend it.

                In the same way, I wonder if God looks on us with a parental-type compassion. How I wish you could understand, He whispers, even pleads, that THIS is not it. This world, with its pencil marks of reality, is not the complete “reality,” but merely a picture of it.

Wow. Yeah, it convicts me every time.

The things that I want to have, to become, to be known as, really will all fade away. I wonder what works I’m doing will actually last through eternity. I’m a language person, not a mathematical, but if I were to compare the duration of time, eternity seems to make the life I spend here on earth as if it’s nothing! And for the rest of the rest of the rest of my life, I will be living in a reality I cannot comprehend here, but I believe in. It is coming.

I also like to see the symbolism here on earth for what things we will experience in heaven. Work, creativity, mystery and revealing, rejoicing and worship, satisfaction, relationships, family.  Hmmmm . . . oh, what will it be like? When we are there forever? When we really see? When we are in that dimension that our minds cannot comprehend now? When we are with the lover of our souls that our hearts desire so much?

Oh yes, I have hope, I have expectation, anticipation, and desire. I have those moments, those glimpses of something to come. My heart jumps at them. A horrifying, yet absolutely exhilarating, sensation washes over me at the thought of them. But, they are few and far between. I do live in this “image of reality” now. And, so as I live here, I ask for wisdom, patience, and endurance Father. Teach us to hold out, to hold on, for that time. That great marriage feast where we will meet you face to face, and know You, our sweet sweet husband as the greatest thing we could ever desire. And though I ask for patience, I also ask for you to increase my desire for you God, more and more, ever and ever. Never let us stop desiring You. And teach us and strengthen our hope that we may study Your Word to know You, as YOU really are.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.