The Single Life

This page is intended to deal with real life situations that single people deal with.  Our goal is to provide you will practical and biblical answers to the questions every single person faces.  Check back regualrly for updates...and be sure to check out our singles archives at the bottom of this page.

Loving Life Between the Now and Not Yet

Written by Jen Abbas

As I write this, my dog is curled at my feet. As long as she has food, water, an open door when she needs to go out, and an occasional chew toy, she's the picture of contentment. She trusts that I will provide all that she needs. Watching her nap, it occurs to me that contentment comes down to trust: Who do I trust to provide what I need? Who do I trust to look out for my best interests?  The truth is, I could learn a lot from my dog.

Depends on How You Look at It
In many ways, my life has taken unexpected twists and turns that have been exciting and fun. In other ways, it hasn't turned out at all like I had hoped. In the end, I have to decide if I trust that God is looking out for me.

Who really wants to hear that God might be OK with us feeling disappointed for a while? I like to believe I have a little more control than that. But the funny thing is, contentment is a bit like shooting blindfold at a moving target. I used to think I'd be content when I landed that job I wanted or once the debts were paid or if I got married. But even as I achieve some of my goals, I too easily find that I still want . just one more thing.

If I'm honest - really honest - with myself, I have to admit that I sometimes lack contentment because I'm focused so much on what I don't have that I miss what I do have. There's this unspoken idea that if only certain things would happen, then life would be better, more fulfilling, more . something. But in the end, contentment really has nothing to do with circumstances but my interpretation of those circumstances.

Discontentment, on the other hand, usually has everything to do with the way things are or are not, what I have or have not.

Ultimately, contentment is a mind-set that ebbs and flows as we choose our point of comparison. It's when I compare my life to those around me that I often feel dissatisfied.
 
The big problem with all of it is that I miss out on the now. Lee Warren, author of "Single Servings: 90 Devotions to Feed Your Soul," writes about the unfulfilled desire to be married (come on, admit it, you can relate). But in that desire to be loved, he says, "we can miss God's plan for our lives right now. Our longing can drive us to focus so much on our possible future that we believe our current season in life is a waste of time. . Longing for love isn't wrong until it reaches the point of eclipsing what God wants to do with us today."

That's true of any unfulfilled desire we have. The point is, we can't always get what we want, when we want it. And to expect otherwise is, honestly, a little childish (don't you think?).

You Just Might Find You Get What You Need
So does that mean we just put on a happy face when feeling discontent? Of course not. A starting point for getting a handle on the ever-elusive enigma of contentment, I'm learning, is recognizing the different purposes discontentment can serve. For instance, sometimes it stems from selfish dissatisfaction, and it serves as a prompt to pay attention to where we're focused. At times, God also uses discontentment to lead us out of our comfort zone and into the next phase of His will for us.

And other times, discontentment simply reflects reality; and the appropriate response is grief. When God's delays turn to denials, we can give ourselves permission to mourn the death of a dream. We may never achieve our financial, professional, or relational goals, and even if we do, they may not unveil the way we imagine. So sometimes discontentment brews from regret or realizing that the good things we desire and have prayed for are simply not to be. But just because we don't get what we want when we want it, doesn't mean God isn't listening or that He doesn't love us deeply.

Sometimes discontentment can even be a good thing. God can produce divine discontent as a means of stirring in us the dissatisfaction that causes us to ask, "What now, Lord?"

Loving Life Between Now and Not Yet
If we believe the headlines on most check-out aisle magazines, our lives on earth exist to bring us pleasure. The reality, though, is if we ever reached a point of sustained contentment, we would lose our greatest reminder of our need for God. Rather than beating ourselves up for not being perfectly happy all of the time, we can use those triggers of discontent to thank God for the things He has given us, invite Him to comfort us in the dreams we mourn, and seek His direction for our next steps. To put it simply, we can use our discontent to draw closer to God.

Lisa McMinn, author of "The Contented Soul," suggests that "we can focus on the good in this moment, in this day or season or year, rather than dismissing or overlooking it because we are holding tight onto some expectation for a good we do not have.

"Life is less about progressing toward some end point than about observing, learning and loving well on the journey itself," she continues. "When we pay attention to what is present in this moment, we acknowledge that life's rhythms bring, in turn, boring, energizing, productive, painful and joyful times. And all are sacred."

And so that's where I am - trying to fully embrace those sacred moments, even when they're not the moments I dreamed for myself.
 
Jen Abbas is a freelance writer and the author of "Generation Ex: Adult Children of Divorce and the Healing of Our Pain." These days, she finds contentment playing Settlers of Catan with good friends.

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