I know. I know. It’s been a while.

I don’t really know where to start. Life has been somewhat swallowing me whole. Very few people know the entire depth of the things I am fighting and wrestling with. And honestly, I still think it’s hard to understand exactly how I feel because I have a bad habit of “carrying it well”.

Some of it isn’t just mine to share. So bear with me in some of my vagueness.

I asked a friend to start meeting with me to work through one of my biggest issues. My side of the problem is my heart posture and perspective. Things are tense and heavy and when you carry heavy things for a while, it begins to wear. Your perspective shifts to defensiveness instead of grace. Disconnect happens or anger sets in. It’s what the enemy wants. Suddenly, trauma comes back up that you thought you buried and the temperature of your home shifts. And love is a choice. Selflessness is a choice. And either you put in the work or watch the enemy win. We chose to pick up our armor.

But life keeps moving. Things still need to be done. Kids still need intentionality and joyful moments. There was a small window where I couldn’t sing. It’s like my vocal cords were incapable of producing sound despite my desperate desire to worship through praise. I couldn’t do anything but cry where I wanted to sing. I am still physically healing from surgery which brings its own round of humility and challenges. I felt at the end of myself.

And when I thought I couldn’t take on anything else, we got news yesterday that I was dreading. It’s the kind of news where your whole world feels like it spins for a moment.

God doesn’t owe me anything. I want to start with the fact that I know He will still be good and that this situation will still be good. It just doesn’t feel like it right now.

I asked God that, if He was going to call us to the waters that He was asking us to tread, that He would not make me relive the grief I had already set down. I had put all hope down and walked away. Processed grief. Found peace. The idea of disappointment feels deafening.

As I write this, I think I’ve found the root of all of my problems. Everything leads back to my disappointment. I have been asked time and time again to let go and to go where He calls and even though I have been obedient, I am admittedly a little disappointed at the current state of my situations. Disappointed. That stings a bit to realize

I was folding laundry and cleaning floors when a song came on Spotify. “What a God” by Roosevelt Stewart and Naomi Raine. This song already makes me want to cry but then one line stood out like it was being directly spoken to me. “Forever Satisfied”.

1 Timothy 6:6 says “⁶ But godliness with contentment is great gain”

The definition : “Satisfied is an adjective that means pleased, content, or happy because you have received, experienced, or achieved what you wanted or needed.”

True satisfaction is not found in a change of circumstances but in a change of the source of it.

Contentment is a choice. And I’m not saying that tears can’t come. I’m not saying that I can’t acknowledge that things are hard right now. Or that they’ve felt hard for a REALLY LONG TIME. I CAN trust in The One who holds tomorrow and know that if I only receive a greater obedience and trust in Him, then that’s enough. I am choosing to be okay with the fire if it means my heart will be beautiful and holy and pleasing to my Father in Heaven.

So as I cry tears of sorrow at His feet, I am choosing to be satisfied in Him. Knowing that the things I am looking at may never change. My story might not get its bow on top the way everyone wants to believe it will.

But the answers I am hoping for is not the point. It’s not where joy is found. It’s not where peace is found. I will never be satisfied by my own hopes and wants in life. Only God can satisfy…

Under the Sun.