Our Discomfort With Discomfort

In our house nothing keeps papa bear from his slumber like the general malaise and discomfort that comes from not having life figured out. Unfortunately, at 33 years of age, I still don't have much of life figured out! The resulting discomfort quite readily turns into anxiety if my head and heart are not right. From low-level, nuisance anxiety to take-your-breathe-away panic, I am well versed in the ways it steals joy and sleep.

With a year spent focusing my head and heart on experiencing rest (see here and here) I have had to look my anxiety in the face quite a bit. It turns out that anxiety is not a natural bedfellow for someone who is seeking the Lord. As I have worked on resting in Him, my anxieties have slowly been slipping further into the background.

An honest examination of our anxieties and the experiences that cause us mental or emotional discomfort can reveal a lot about our hearts. Scripture has plenty to say about anxiety and worry precisely because they seem like an ever-present possibilities in our lives. In my life they are most often a result of uncertainty and unanswered big life questions

A lot of times people think they are pretty good at diagnosing their sources of anxiety: conflict with a loved one, concern over work projects, the state of the world as seen on the news, or lack of clear direction in a particular area of life. I know I usually have considered myself a good diagnostician of my own struggles and stresses.

Looking closely at my own anxiety I can see that much of it comes from being uncomfortable with discomfort. I want answers, resolution, and closure and usually want to avoid the messy, complicated, and patience-stretching work of getting those things.

As a Christian, my first tendency is to pray for the resolution of that issue. I pray for relief, clarity, changed circumstances, or whatever else I think will best remove or resolve the issue.

And for years this felt like the right thing to do, bringing those things to the Lord. God certainly is capable of answering those prayers and bringing about those changes. But this year I've started to see it differently.

Think about it for a minute. Something in your life is bringing some discomfort, frustration, or anxiety to your life. So you ask God to resolve the issue. What is really happening when you do that?

Hidden behind our pious prayers is often a heart that is just saying "give me what I want" or "I deserve to be comfortable". We are telling God that IF ONLY He would give us whatever resolution we are praying for we would have peace, joy, comfort, etc.

Too often our trust isn't actually in God's ability to BE those things for us but rather in his ability to give stuff to us that we think will provide those things for us. And we do find peace, joy, and comfort in those things. Sadly, God intends for us to find those thing IN Him and not just FROM Him.

This is precisely the problem with all of our anxiety. We don't correctly identify the source of our anxiety and discomfort and we are left saying "IF ONLY". We think that our struggling marital relationship is the issue. Or our finances. Or the uncertainty regarding our job. The deeper reality is that our anxiety and discomfort come from our broken relationship with God. The context where that brokenness displays itself may be our marriage or our finances or our job but rest assured that the underlying brokenness is rooted in how our hearts are relating to God.

Adam, when confronted by God in the garden identifies Eve as the source of his problems. Adam overlooks his own complicity and failure and thinks that IF ONLY God had given him someone better than Eve things would have been different.

Cain, with his poor relationship with God, looks at his brother and identifies Abel as the source of his troubles. Cain overlooks his own deficient worship and assumes that IF ONLY Abel wasn't showing him up things would be ok.

And right on down through the pages of scripture we can see people feeling anxious and thinking IF ONLY God would....

And so we too, overlook our lack of love and trust in God, and pray to Him thinking IF ONLY we had x, y, or z we could have peace and joy and truly experience God.

As an example consider a recent situation from my life that has brought its share of discomfort and anxiety.

My wife and I are 2 1/2 years into what will probably be a 3 1/2  or 4 year adoption process. We started this process thinking it would take 15-18 months. Unfulfilled desires, longings for our son or daughter, and a sense of being 'stuck' while we wait have been pretty steady companions. The waiting has not been pleasant. It has caused discomfort and frustration and anxiety.

So for quite a while we prayed for answers. Clarity. Quicker resolution to the whole process. For our son or daughter to come home soon. Those are good things right? Things that we know God has called us to. Things that would bring some measure of resolution, peace, joy, or comfort.

And yet...

Nowhere in those prayers did we actually acknowledge that it is God Himself that we need in order to experience peace or comfort. We've felt anxiety and a certain level of emotional (and financial) discomfort because of the adoption process and so we prayed for it to draw to an end.

But since when did adding a kid to a family bring peace or comfort or rest? I've done it twice already and each time my peace, comfort, and ability to rest have been severely challenged.

We have rightly longed for peace and an end to our anxiety and discomfort but we have wrongly assumed that those things are going to come from something God gives rather than simply from being with God. We have loved God for what He can do for us rather than for who he is. In those moments our faith is functionally no different than the prosperity gospel wherein we use or manipulate or beseech God to give us 'good' things. We fail to see that He is the Good Thing.

For us, our anxiety and discomfort have been exposing how much we rely on things and circumstances to keep us cool, calm, and collected. Too much of our supposed godliness has been revealed to be of the "as long as" variety where we set the conditions under which we will feel safe, secure, and comfortable do that we can live godly lives.

As long as the adoption process follows our timelines...

As long as costs work our as expected...

As long as our desires are met....

The thing is that what our hearts crave most is already available to us apart from any particular circumstances. If we are pursuing God and being filled with the Spirit we can be assured of love, joy, peace, patience, and so on. In experiencing discomfort and anxiety we ought to be praying for more of God and not for something else that we have identified as a 'solution'.

As I have worked to rest in the Lord I have had to confess that I often mistakenly come to God with prayer requests for a change in circumstances and not a change in my heart.

If God is my refuge and my strength, a rock and a shelter, and an ever present help for my need there is nothing apart from Him that will relieve my anxiety or discomfort.

He himself is our comfort. And joy. And peace. Our discomfort and our our anxiety reveal that we don't know know him as we ought to. Our discomfort with our discomfort should force to look inside our hearts. Too often when we experience discomfort we look outside ourselves to see what might bring relief.

The American idols of safety, security, prosperity, and health are a direct affront to our capacity to trust and know God as comfort for our souls. Anxiety creeps into our lives not because life is hard but because we aren't experiencing God.

My own heart can attest to the fact that much of my own sense of well-being, contentment, joy, and patience is built on having things go my way. It has been sad over the past few months to realize how much peace, joy, comfort, love, and other things I have missed out on by ignoring the fact that God is all of those things and more for those who love him.

My prayer is that in the future I would use my discomfort to reveal ways I am trusting in something besides God for comfort. I pray that I would quickly be able to identify the ways my anxiety is actually an issue of how closely I am walking with God and not an issue of circumstances.

It has been a thrilling and joy-filled journey to start again in my walk with God paying more attention to who he is and less attention to what he can do for or give to me. When feelings of discomfort or anxiety come up I now recognize them for the warning signs that they are of a floundering relationship with God. By His grace anxiety is slowly being replaced with peace, contentment, and joy.