Although you may find contentment in your life, it will never absolve the desire for more.
This is at the heart of a struggle I felt for years. Straddling this place of deeply loving the life I have with my husband, our home, friends, family, my job etc. yet feeling this desire for more.
For a while I thought social media may be the problem. When I clicked open the instagram app, I would scroll and scroll, looking at the highlight reel of everyone else's life, wishing for and wanting some of what they had.
As it turns out, I did have some work to do in the realm of cultivating gratitude in my daily life so that comparison and envy didn't steal the joy of what I had been given each time I opened my feeds.
But even with putting in the reps, doing the work of cultivating gratitude and striking that stance of contentment without complacency, I still want more some days.
I want
a book deal
a baby
a steady stream of passive income
to found a non-profit
And I believe there will come a day (hopefully sooner rather than later because man I am impatient!) that those things will come to be.
But then there will be still more.
You get the degree then you want to job.
You get the job then you want the promotion.
You get the apartment then you want the house.
You get the boyfriend then you want the husband.
You get the husband then you want the baby.
You get the baby then you want another.
The list goes on.
And that's just life, life on this side of heaven, the other half of life that doesn't make the highlight reel.
It's where you can love your life as it is but also have dreams you want to see come true.
You are deeply content with your life in life yet you still desire more.
It's where you are deeply content with your lot and can truly say 'it is well with my soul' yet feel the aching and longing in your soul for more because this temporary world is not your eternal home.
Although you may find contentment in your life, it will never absolve the desire for more and that's ok.
For years I have tried to squelch those desires, believing that it must still be something wrong with me, something in my heart and soul that needed some serious rewiring and work.
It’s a strange dichotomy, an odd pull.
I am wildly grateful for my life, if I never received another gift from God, saw another dream come true, it would be enough.
Yet I still desire it, I still want more.
And that’s precisely the bizarre balancing act we experience on this side of heaven, it's the tightrope we walk.
And until we get to heaven, when we are whole, home and complete, we will feel that pull and that yearning.
As strange as it is, I’ve come to appreciate those unmet desires in my heart, those longings in my soul that I work and wait for, never knowing if they will come to be.
It reminds me that I’m not home, I’m not whole, that I haven’t gotten too settled and too comfortable in this temporary life.
All those unmet desires and longings I hold are the very things that keep me ever cultivating a life of contentment, where I can wholeheartedly say ‘it is well’ whatever my lot.
They will never be absolved in this life time and it’s ok.