How many truly contented people do you know? How many people are in your life about whom you could honestly say that they have everything they want and need? Someone who never says, “I’m not satisfied with only what I have—I want what they have”?
I don’t know anyone like that, but if I did, I’d want what they have!
There are healthy ways to want what someone else has. It’s one of the reasons I’m a Christ follower today: I had this void in my spirit, and hole in my heart, and I knew people who’d had that same void filled by God. I wanted what they had. I studied it, went looking for it, and found it.
But for the most part, whenever I find myself thinking, “I want what they have,” it boils down to jealousy and discontent. It’s about wanting to fill a void that really wasn’t there in the first place.
Paul says that love doesn’t envy. In The Message, Eugene Peterson translates is as “Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.” I actually see two sides to this, but today I’m just going to focus on the first: being content with what I do have.
I love my wife. And I’m learning to be content with who she is and how we relate to each other. It doesn’t mean I’m not constantly working to deepen and improve our relationship, but it does mean that I’m not trying to make her be something she’s not, or to make the relationship be something it can’t. It’s about meeting her where she is and being completely satisfied that she is God’s gift to me and that who she is—as she is—perfectly fills the space in my life that God created for my spouse. (All of this is of course true in different ways of everyone we love; it’s just that the application of the concepts is expressed in different ways.)
Contentment is different than settling. Though it is very difficult for me to admit, there was a period of time when I thought I had settled when I married Michele. I thought I deserved more than she could give me. I thought I was entitled to have everything I wanted, but I resigned myself to the fact that I had made my choice and now had to live with it, despite the fact that it wasn’t perfect. I had to accept the flaws and the problems and the difficulties and ignore the fact that they bothered me. Settling means thinking that I deserve more but I’ll never have it.
I was so wrong. Contentment is knowing that I probably deserve less than what I’ve been given, and that even with the flaws and the problems and the difficulties, Michele was chosen for me and she is everything I could need or want in a spouse. It is truly feeling fulfilled with the relationship and knowing that there is nothing better for me, that everything I want and need from my spouse can come from this relationship if I would only allow it. It is knowing that she isn’t here to meet all my needs—no one person can do that—but that there is no person in the world better matched to me than she is.
Am I there yet? Not quite, but I’m growing closer every day, and I can honestly say the feeling of discontent I once felt is completely gone. I no longer want what I don’t have, because what I already have perfectly fills my needs. I am God’s child, and I’m worthy of something wonderful—and I already have it. It’s about time I started treating her like the special gift she is.
Photo Credits: intuitions and my muse by PrASanGaM, 10/11/07
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