Content in Christ

Recently, a sorority sister of mine blogged about discontentment, particularly the kind that comes from struggling to control everything so as not to make mistakes in an effort to look like you've got it all together. I'm very familiar with that kind of discontentment, but God has really worked on my heart in the last year (especially through a tough time at work) and I responded to her post with the following (long) paragraph. I wanted to repost it here because I hope that it will be helpful to others, and it's a good reminder to me.

I know how exhausting it can be to feel the need to control everything so as not to make mistakes. I was particularly good at trying to do that at work. Unfortunately, I found that I continued to make mistakes, no matter how hard I tried to avoid them, and it made me very angry and discontent. After sharing my anger about this issue with a wise older woman at church, she said she used to be the same way, but she had started praying at the start of each day that God would help her to trust that everything that was going to happen that day was under his sovereign control, even the mistakes. That was very comforting and it helped me work through some of my issue. What has helped me overcome it, though, is to realize the reason I wanted to control things and why it made me so angry when I made mistakes. I wanted to look like I had it all together. I wanted worldly praise for how great I was at everything. But the thing is that God's goodness to me is the only reason I have any skills to do anything well, and my efforts in life should be to glorify him and work diligently at all things as if working for the Lord (Colossians 3:22), not seeking worldly praise. After days, weeks and months of consciously focusing my efforts on doing my work excellently so as to mirror Christ's excellence (and not try to conjure up my own look of excellence) and realizing that the mistakes I made were already known by Him and He was not disappointed in me because HE was in control and He knew I was working hard to glorify Him in my work, not to glorify myself, I began to feel more content. That shift in mindset has really helped me find more contentment in all areas of my life, knowing that it eternally does not matter if others think I have it all together. I won't lie, though. It's a struggle every day to commit to working to give God glory and not myself because that's so contrary to the world. However, it's worth it (God deserves it) and it helps me find contentment in Christ. I hope you, too, can find comfort and contentment in this!