Rooted deep within all of us is an unyeilding desire for satisfaction. We spend our days searching for ways to feel complete, happy, purposeful--satisfied. We look for satisfaction in so many different ways and areas. We pursue entertainment, pleasure, relationships, connection, power, success, religion. We are ever-looking for ways, people, or things to convince us or remind us that life is worth living, and when we lose people or positions or pleasures that played into our satisfaction, we may feel deep grief, and we are forced to ask ourselves once again, "What can I now gain that might satisfy me?" And so the search continues, a cycle of adding and subtracting, gaining and losing, wanting and needing.
A predominant saying in American Christian culture is that there is a "God-shaped hole in our hearts." We are taught that those who don't accept Christ can never be satisfied, because even if they have all the other compartments of their heart filled, they lack the final piece -- a relationship with God. For as long as I can remember, I have spent my time assuming that I had the metaphorical God-shaped hole in my heart filled, since I do have a relationship with God, but feeling very aware that other areas of my heart were still empty and needing to be filled. I have lived desperately searching and struggling to obtain satisfaction in my soul by trying to make and save money, to find a supportive community, to secure meaningful leadership roles, and, more than anything else, to find and develop a relationship that would lead to marraige. I have believed that God, plus these things, would give me satisfaction, and I have labored intentionally and strategically to achieve them.
The problem that I have encountered time and time again, though, is that these other areas of my heart that I keep trying to fill absolutely refuse to stay filled. I get one of the pieces in place, and I have a few days in which I excitedly think to myself, "Satisfaction is so close now." But, in time, that piece will fall away, and it devastates me. It leaves me feeling hopeless, desperate, utterly discouraged and overwhelmed with longing. I feel fatigue in my spirit, and I am broken and lost. I wonder is satisfaction is even possible, and I begin to believe that it is not.
I've been feeling this way for weeks now, and the weight is crushing. I remember other seasons in my life in which I have felt similar desperation, and I am discouraged by how frequent these "valley" seasons are. I wonder what I am doing wrong, and I can't seem to be content with people telling me, "God will provide these things for you in time. You just need to wait for Him." It all seems like one big game, and I feel like I am losing.
Over the last few days, I have come to one of the most difficult realizations I have ever faced. I have realized that there is not a God-shaped hole in my heart. I have realized that God is not a puzzle piece to my satisfaction; rather, God is to be mycomplete satisfaction. I have realized that Christians are not only able to be satisfied because they have the God-piece, but they are called to be satisfied in God, even when all other desires go unmet. If I never get married, or my marriage fails, or my husband dies, or if I find myself in poverty or sickness, or if I am lonely, or anything else, I am still commanded to rejoice. The Bible is overflowing with commands to rejoice, in both the Old and New Testament. Philippians 4:4 cuts me the deepest: "Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again--rejoice!" Always.
This realization is dreadfully difficult for me for one simple reason: I am not satisfied with God alone. This is a terrifying statement, because I am struck with the awareness that I do not know how to generate a sense of satisfaction in God in myself. Satisfaction is something that rises up within you, not something you can congure into being. Based on that reality, I realize the only way to obtain satisfaction in God alone is to beg earnestly for it, just as David did in Psalm 90:14-15 when he said, "Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!"
The definition of satisfy is "to fulfill the desires, expectations, needs, or demands of a person; to give full contentment." As I type that out, I begin to think about how I cannot even fathom what full contentment would feel like, because I have never experienced it. All this time, although I have had genuine love for God and a true desire to serve Him, I have had a wrong understanding of who God was to be in my life, and that has resulted in idols and dependencies in my life that produce unhealth and consequently lack of satisfaction in my soul. Today I understand that I must and canbe satisfied in God alone, and although I am not there yet, I hope earnestly that one day I will be and that my life will be a shining example of a woman radiant with the joy of Christ, who will say and mean that at the right hand of God there are pleasures ever-more, that God is enough, and that in Him life is abundant. One day I will mean those things, and until that day, I will labor and seek to know the one true God better, and I believe with great confidence that my faithful God will not leave me disappointed.
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