What is contentment?

Let me tell you a little bit of my testimony.

I’ve been a believer as long as I can remember, but decided to get serious about my faith in college. After college and early through my marriage, my husband and I both sought the Lord earnestly and grew in community. God, in His wisdom, kept calling us deeper and deeper into faith and leadership and we continued to say yes. Then 2020 hit, my husband was added to our church’s eldership team and we welcomed twins with two more toddlers in tow. Twins plus toddlers have a way of flipping your world upside down and I found myself trapped in a cycle of resentment, exhaustion, discontentment and bitterness. I was harsh and angry and a shell of the person I once was. Make it stand out

I’ve been a believer as long as I can remember, but decided to get serious about my faith in college. After college and early through my marriage, my husband and I both sought the Lord earnestly and grew in community. God, in His wisdom, kept calling us deeper and deeper into faith and leadership and we continued to say yes. Then 2020 hit, my husband was added to our church’s eldership team and we welcomed twins with two more toddlers in tow. Twins plus toddlers have a way of flipping your world upside down and I found myself trapped in a cycle of resentment, exhaustion, discontentment and bitterness. I was harsh and angry and a shell of the person I once was.

But in His kindness, God brought me to my lowest point to teach me an invaluable lesson: how to rest. I dove into His Word. I studied what rest in Jesus looed like. I studied the book of Hosea and saw Jesus’ deep and ferocious love for his bride: me. For the first time, I finally saw my value and my worth as a daughter of the Most High, not in my ability as a mother or a wife. For the first time in a long time, I was able to breathe. He taught me how to rest and how to cast all of my cares and my fears and even my dreams on the cross knowing that He was good and faithful to take care of everything I gave Him.

This, He taught me, is what true contentment is: to trust that He’s got full control of my life, while at the same time knowing His goodness means that He’s going to take better care of all of it than I ever could. To know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am safe and cared for no matter what happens in my life.

For about a year, He walked with me, hand in hand, and revealed His deep, unending love for me. Then, about three years ago, the Lord told me that my foundations were now firm; that my period of growing had come to a close and that I was now safe and secure in Him. “I am Yours, and You are mine,” was the phrase I heard that day, and it’s given me so much peace since then.

However, over the last few months, the Lord has been revealing my secret heart about contentedness. I had given up all these things years ago, surrendering them to the Lord in faith that He would care for all of them better than I ever could. And it was life-giving! But He’s been showing me that I’ve been replacing those things with new ideas and new problems and new goals and new fears. When I thought that I was wholly content in the Lord, putting all of my eggs in His basket, I was actually harboring all these new feelings for myself, without surrendering them.

He’s slowly bringing to light the fact that contentment is a continual surrendering, not just a one time thing. Our hearts are human and they’re so fickle! We establish contentment in one area and our heart decides to go off the deep end and start taking control of something completely different. I’m having to go through the same steps I did years ago to surrender everything to Him again, but luckily I have the tools to do it easier this time around.

My heart, more than anything, is that all come to experience rest in Jesus; that all would come to know the deep exhale that can only happen when you are completely surrendered to the goodness and sovereignty of Jesus Christ. If you’d love to experience that as well, I’d love to pray for you. Please let me know below how I can partner with you in the Lord!

Love you, friend

Brittany