Contentment 101

But godliness with contentment is great gain~ 1 Timothy 6:6

Last weekend was rough. It started Friday night right after dinner with the discovery that we had experienced a jailbreak. Max the hamster was on the loose. We quickly determined that Max did not escape due to his intellect or trickery.

Max the hamster was unintentionally set free in an act of negligence while in the care of Young One. While playing in her room earlier that week, she got distracted by a book, and went to bed when she was done reading. Max saw his opportunity, took full advantage of the situation and vanished into the dark recesses of our home.    

Things did not improve in the morning. We all woke up tired and cranky after searching for Max into the wee hours with no luck. Alan and I had some urgent tasks we had to take care of, so we left the kids to continue the search while we ran errands. Our afternoon of errands was interrupted with a phone call and some unsettling news concerning one of our aging parents. 

 When we arrived home shortly before dinnertime I was greeted by one of the most depressing messes I have ever encountered. Max was still missing in action and the house looked as if Vikings had plundered it. The frantic search for Max resulted in closets being emptied out; some of the contents had been put back, but many random items were left out in a sloppy and haphazard way. There was absolutely no logic or order to my formally clean and organized home.

The kitchen was an authentic tragedy. I could tell exactly what every single person had eaten in the course of the day because nothing had been put away. There was nearly as much food burnt onto the stovetop as in our refrigerator. The sink was overflowing with soiled dishes, probably because no one had bothered to run the dishwasher and I’m reasonably sure that new life forms were beginning to emerge on my countertops.

My frustration was heightened by the fact that those responsible for the mayhem were all gone for the evening. I couldn’t growl at the guilty parties or ask them to clean it up. My only options were to sit in the mess for the next twenty-four hours or clean it up myself and stew in my own bitterness. I don’t deal well with chaos so I chose the latter and felt less than gracious about my choice.

Later, as we were finally getting the house back in order, my darling husband looked at me wistfully said something that made me want to punch him:

We really are going to miss all of this someday.

At that point I was too tired and too irritated with too many people to respond to my husband in a civil manner. So I gave him a withering glare and headed off to bed.

Conviction typically hits me hard around four o’clock in the morning, and that night was no different. As I was struggling to go back to sleep it occurred to me (much to my chagrin) that my husband had a valid point.  

It’s true that I will likely never miss late-night hamster hunts or cleaning up messes I wasn’t involved in making. No matter how hard I try I cannot imagine myself missing the prospect of lecturing a ten-year-old on responsible hamster ownership. And I can say for absolute certain that even if I live to be a thousand I will not miss stress-inducing phone calls.

However, the day is coming when I will most definitely miss having a house full of messy people to love and a Father to worry about.

As I tossed and turned that night I was hit hard with the truth that one cannot have the joy of life without the chaos of living. The late-night hamster hunts and lectures on responsibility are just one small piece of having a child who brings joy and laughter into my life. An occasional kitchen catastrophe is an unpleasant but small piece of having college students who choose to live at home. And worry is just the dark side of being lucky enough to have another person to love in this life.

The misadventures of this past weekend were a much-needed reminder of the truth that the key to being content in every situation is living in and choosing to love the moments in life we are given. I was reminded that the Lord ordains each and every moment of our lives for a reason. 

Some moments are intended to bless us and help us to understand exactly how passionately God loves us. Other moments are meant to benefit us in another equally important way.  The moments that feel most unpleasant at the time are meant to grow us, to change us, to produce in us an image more like the image of Jesus.

Lord, let me know my end, and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is~ Psalm 39:4 RSV