When You're Dreaming of a Different Life
Quieting the Quiet Monster of Discontentment
I dreamed of a different life recently.
Nothing fancy. I mean, sure I’d like a little luxury, but I would settle for something that just didn’t include wiping other people’s butts or so much screaming over things like a stolen Hot Wheel. Maybe just for a day. I thought about it in the shower. I thought about it while I brushed my teeth. I thought about how I longed for a whole day where no one talked to me or touched me. The more I thought about it the more it felt like something I needed and the more restless it made me feel.
The restlessness is familiar. Why is it we always feel that we need something different than what we have? Maybe a different life or maybe just a different house or a different body or a different job. Whatever it is. It’s just not what we have.
That’s how discontentment works. It is a quiet, but ravenous monster. It always dangles something for us to grasp for and if we grasp it, it finds something new to dangle, promising this time, it’s really it. If we’re not careful, we can spend our whole lives in this game of cat and mouse. Happiness eludes us as something always just outside the boundary lines of our lives.
As I finished my morning daydream of a day of solitude, I tried to quiet this grumbling monster of discontentment with truths I had just spoken to my daughter the day before (funny how that works). I wanted a day of quiet, but that was not the day God was giving me. No daydream could change that.
I thought of the verse, “This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).
Is it scandalous to say I always kind of hated that verse? Or maybe I just hated the song because of the times my mom would sing it as she ripped off my sheets to summon me for Saturday morning chores. It always felt like some kind of smiley, cheery, optimistic mantra that just doesn’t suit my inner Eeyore. Why hasn’t anyone put a nice Ecclesiastes verse to melody? But if you parse it up, it doesn’t have to be that. It can be the secret to contentment.
This the day that the Lord has made…not some other day I’m dreaming of.
The Lord has made it. Yahweh. The I AM. The eternal, sovereign Lord who has all knowledge. And in his sovereignty, he has given this day to me. He only gives good things, and when He gives hard things, He gives them for a good reason.
He made it. Not chance or happenstance. This day has been crafted. It has been prepared with intention specifically for me. Though it may be fraught with struggles, it also bears the fingerprints of wise and loving God.
So…therefore…I can rejoice in this day even though it’s not the day I’m dreaming of. I can rejoice because I know who made it and I know He knows me.
Rejoicing doesn’t have to mean loud, smiling optimism. It can mean quiet contentment. It can mean trusting the boundary lines God has drawn for my life. It can mean not looking over the fence to see what discontentment is dangling now, but putting my hands and my heart to the work that is here for me in this day, poopy bottoms, Hot Wheel fights, and all.
