Lessons Learned in Mid-Air.

This summer has been four months in mid-air.Already uprooted from college life but still weeks away from starting my semester in France, life feels profoundly "in transit." Being home for the summer always feels that way. But over the last few months, I've felt especially suspended, released from the gravity of Chicago but not yet subject to that of France. I'm hovering in the in between: breath held, bidding my bleeding heart be tugged by either the city I have left behind or the one that's still an ocean away, but never not moving. I can't bring myself to simply sit still. My heart is rowdy, and my head is so preoccupied with thinking about either the last chapter or the next one that the present gets back-burnered.Plainly, this restlessness that has swept over me is discontentment. It is not sustainable, it is less than what God has made me for, but it is so dangerously effortless. Discontentment often comes to us dressed up like Hope. As soon as the urge to be someone or somewhere else seeps into our souls, we reason it away as a natural part of Christian existence, a symptom of that hope embedded in us for resurrected bodies, for Kingdom come, and for eternity with Jesus. All my hoping and hankering for this semester to start is not entirely wrong. It's a part of that adventurous anticipation for the good things God has in store for me (Romans 8:15-17). And, yes, there is a corner of our souls that is built to desire next and future things. But, let's be careful about confusing that pure heavenward hope with a distaste for the here and now with which God has blessed us.After realizing what restlessness was doing to me--because it really does do things to our hearts and heads--as well as what it wasn't doing for me (i.e. making time go faster), I began to ask God to help me give it up. There was no single revelation or verse that God sent as an answer to my prayers. Instead, it was a slow, steady prying open of my eyes that He started, this injection of wonder straight into my bloodstream. And, as my eyes widened in amazement at the world around me, discontentment shrunk.Something I've noticed: God is always bent on improving our hearts before improving our circumstances. As He stirred up wonder inside of me, I stopped wanting to change my circumstances. I found myself getting lost in the present. And, as He grew contentment and appreciation within me, the wanderlust for future things and aches for the past disintegrated.Attentiveness is so good for our hearts. For one thing, it teaches us sloppy, scattered, everywhere-at-once humans how to sit still. Listen. Look. Stay focused and close to the earth's unfolding. It's a discipline of life with Christ to be attuned to the now. Matthew 6 says, "Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow" (The Message translation). Jesus asks us to consider the flowers and the birds, the way that He cares for them so kindly and completely. He asks us to pay attention. And when we do, creation shouts back at us its infinite testimonies of God's provision.To give God our eyes, to let Him widen them in amazement and attentiveness to the present--that is the beginning of contentment. We have the present, this day in front of us that wants our attention. There are thousands of days behind us and thousands more ahead that merit gratitude and hope, but today asks for our contentment. God is waiting to meet us in the flowers and in the birds, in the stillness of His cared-for world. Only He can submerge us in that attentive wonder, which exterminates discontentment and heals the restlessness of our souls. So let Him.words and photo by Delaney Young