on being content

i was thinking/have been thinking.  .  . about being content. 

 and about where i am presently at in life.  i've always strived to have an attitude of "contentedness" when it comes to material things...being content with what i have. . . and those things seem to continually lose their importance to me.  

but contentedness in life and who i am...i'm not sure about that.  for a while i was on a "self-esteem" kick. . . where i strived to be a person content in who they are and i succeeded.  but recently i've been less and less satisfied.  just yesterday i had this thought: what if my dissatisfaction with myself stems from my discontent with God.  i've been taught that my identity should stem, not in affirmation from people, but from God.   my identity is founded in my view of God.  

all this wandering of written thoughts...where is it going? to this.  it is not God who i am unsatisfied with...but my view of God.   lately, my view of God is changing and as it does my view of myself shifts.   

i have realized that i can learn to be content with this life

but should i be?  i said, i can be content with life, but lately I'm not.  i see the future that has been mapped out by 4 years of college and i realize that it is good.  but i am not content with it.  i don't want to just be good.  i want to live.  i want to experience life outside of security, to truly know people, and to draw closer to God.  

i have also learned that i can never be content with God.

that seems wrong, but to my experience it is true.

an explanation: i have sought to understand my relationship with God...I have sought to draw closer and closer to Him.  .  . but as I draw nearer to God, I become less and less content with life...and less and less content with my relationship with Him.  I want to be closer, I want God to be more of my life, but when i struggle to make that happen...when time after time, I find myself back at the same place...I become unsatisfied.

So, in reaction to that I pull away and leave God out of my life.  I live normally, happily, but without the intimacy of God.  And though I find myself moving through life quite fine...i realize it is not as it should be.  life loses its most brilliant emotions and colors.  

So, you see I can not be content to live without God, but I have never succeeded in being content with God.

i am grateful for discontent.  without i would settle into a comfortable surface-level life.  with it, i push beyond myself.  i push beyond what i don't understand, and i push beyond security to what is unknown.