31 Days -- Day 2 -- Contentment is NOT Plan B

One of the biggest struggles I have had with the theme of Contentment, is the fact that I saw it as a step backward.  Last years theme was Anticipation.  And really loved the thought of that theme.  There were some big changes that I was expecting and wanting to happen and it was like God was giving me the go ahead to believe that that was the year they were going to happen.  And those particular things didn't happen the way I wanted them to.  At the end of the year I was left feeling disappointed and frustrated that I was sitting in virtually the same place I was at the beginning of the year.  And then to get the theme Contentment.  It was just like a slap in the face, if I am truly honest about my feelings.  Like God was saying,  "You didn't get what you wanted and now be happy about it"

That really stung and hurt.  I was mad, I was frustrated,  I didn't want to take a step backward.  It felt like God was saying nothing was going to happen in these areas that I was so anticipating change to happen.  And quite frankly I didn't want that.  I was still looking at is as a Plan B so to speak.  So, I wrestled, I complained, I avoided.

Case in point, during this past year I picked up a Contentment: A Godly Woman's Adornment by Linda Brownbeck as one of Kindle's freebies (I just checked is isn't free anymore but it is still available).  I halfheartedly began it a time or two.  But never really got into it.  I was still complaining.  Last night I decided to read it again and really pay attention to what God was saying to me.  I ran across the following quote that I had marked and shared before.

Happiness, to our way of thinking, is the pinnacle. Happiness is when we get the things we have dreamed of and when life goes our way. Contentment, so we think, is secondary. We see it as the consolation emotion we must settle for when actual happiness is lacking. "I'm not really happy with the way things are, but I'm content for now." Yet contentment and happiness are one and the same if we understand these words from a biblical perspective and orient our lives there.


But this time it struck me in a new way.  I remembered a quote from a video in the Beth Moore study I am doing (A Woman's Heart).  Paraphrasing Beth, she was saying that God doesn't have a Plan B.  He knew all along what was going to happen,  knows what IS going to happen, what are actions are going to be.   Even that I was going to put those two sources together last night and come to an epiphany.  Contentment isn't my plan B, It was God's plan all along for me.  He just knew what it was going to take to get me to see and understand it.  For one Contentment is understanding and knowing God is with you in the valleys as well as the on the mountain top.