If You Can’t Be Content

I always knew God created me to mother children. I knew it the same way I knew I had blue eyes. It was just a fact about the way I was made. So our infertility diagnosis left me with questions and doubts that weren’t easily answered. I wrestled with many heavy emotions, and in all of that, I had this guilt. I felt guilty that I wasn’t able to be content the way I thought a good Christian girl was supposed to be.

There were moments during those years that just felt like survival. There were dark nights of weeping. There were baby showers that left me shaky and angry. There were date nights with my husband that were supposed to be fun and ended up being lonely as we grieved our losses in our own ways. I wanted so badly to fix my infertility. I didn’t feel peace about not being a mother. I couldn’t abandon the desire for children God had placed in my heart for as long as I could remember. I felt this weight that maybe if I just achieved some state of holy contentment with our childlessness, then God would be proud of me and give me what I wanted. But instead, it seemed like he withheld both things from me– contentment and children.

This battle with contentment has continued to be a struggle for me (long after I’ve experienced some healing of my infertility pain) as I’ve navigated foster care, adoption, and even in things like my marriage, and friendships. When I’ve felt guilty for not being more content as I’ve faced struggles in my life, I have found myself wrestling to understand how to live in this tension. How do I make peace with the lack of peace I feel?

I don’t think I’ve arrived at the perfect answer. This aspect of my faith is something I’m continuing to mull over and wrestle through. But I want to share with you where I’ve landed on the subject.

I’m learning “contentment” isn’t the same thing as sitting on the couch in my sweatpants eating chips and saying, “Oh well. What are you gonna do?” when faced with adversity. That doesn’t seem like contentment, but feels more like defeat and hopelessness. If I had been content with childlessness, I wouldn’t have made the sacrifices necessary to pursue adoption. If I had been content with my the state of my marriage, I wouldn’t have been willing to do the hard work of partnering with my husband to make it better. If I would have been content with our experience in the foster care system, I wouldn’t have been willing to lobby our state senators for changes, or been inspired to keep working with foster parents to navigate their own way through the system.

It’s precisely because I’ve been discontent with things I see around me that I’ve been motivated to work for change and push through resistance or pain. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I can see how God has used my desire to fix, to change, to work, to make things better in the situations where I’ve been placed. That restless feeling has seemed to be God’s nudging into uncharted waters where he leads me along.

Photos by Rebecca Tredway Photography

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
1 Timothy 6:6-9

So here’s what I think contentment may look like in some of the situations I’ve found myself:

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