Contentment versus Discontent: Part Deux

I've been reflecting further on the nature of contentment, and how to get there from the land of discontent, and I've come up with the following.  I'm sure my "solution," if you can call it such, since I guarantee it's a battle I'll fight repeatedly my whole life long, is nothing new or particularly inventive.  But as I've been able to find a small measure of peace through a change in attitude and practices,  I thought I'd share, since you were all so kind as to comment, offer suggestions, and mostly just empathize with the feeling of not being quite where you want.

First - the back story, part one, can be found here:

Not wanting to wallow all Fall in a bog of disappointment, disillusionment, and discouragement (oh, those nasty "dis" words), I've adopted a three pronged approach that seems to be offering some measure of consolation:

1) Re-examine and remind myself of all the blessings and provision that God *has* provided, in His good time.  These blessings have been either gratuitous, in that we didn't need them but were very happy to receive just the same, or utterly fortuitous, because we really needed His provision to come through, and it did.  The list gets long when I really stop and think about it - a loving (and humorous) husband, a beautiful daughter, good jobs for both of us that have allowed us to have a lot of flexibility, and have allowed me to be home with our daughter; families that love us; good educations, great friends both near and far.  Everything that we have needed, He has provided, with a goodly measure of non-needs at the same time.  Part of step one is also realizing that this very apartment, that we want to move out of, is among the many blessings we have received.  Indeed, the fact that the oil furnace broke, necessitating replacement, and more importantly prompting our landlord to replace our expensive electric water heater with (cheaper) on demand hot water is proof that God is watching out for us, even when it isn't necessarily what we're wanting.

In this same vein, I've examined why exactly we want a house so badly, and whether it is currently a want, or a need, and have found that it is still truly the former.  Our current apartment, while small, is fine for a family of three with the newest member still co-sleeping in our bed.  We do have a second bedroom, even, that can be converted to LW's room if we end up here for a goodly length more time.  It would be tight with two little ones, but not as tight as my parents made do with when we were small (a single-wide trailer with an addition, until I was five, while my dad was building our house).  We'd like a house because financially it makes more sense long term; because we'd like a place to sink our roots and really call home; because we'd like a yard, and the ability to grow much more of our food.  But for the time being, a want it is.

2) Examine what is "lacking" in our current living space, and address it, where financially feasible.  When we moved into our apartment, we didn't know for how long it was going to be; we were hoping to buy a house once our one-year lease expired.  We've now been here well over two years, and some of the assumptions that we made going into it have proven false.  For instance, we've chose to make do with the old $40 carpet I'd bought at Staples for a former apartment, figuring it didn't make sense to buy something nicer.  We made do with a cardboard box at first for a DVD stand, until our landlord kindly donated his old one when he purchased a bigger TV.  Fortunately, I did yield to Jim's better judgment in the matter of blinds and shades for the windows - if it had been up to me, I probably would have done without, figuring "we're not going to be here for long."  But in the meantime, this attitude has made us unconsciously act as though this isn't really our home - and has thus increased our feeling of discontentment with where we're at.

So, I've been looking around our home, and seeing the places where we could make it a little bit more homey.  Some of these touches are small - I'm planning to make a nice shower curtain, and some new curtains for our kitchen.  Some are bigger - it really is time to get a new rug for our living room at the least, and perhaps the bedroom as well.  We'd love to get a small flat screen TV that could hang on the wall and free up more floor space (as well as keeping the buttons out of the reach of inquisitive fingers - our current model, a TV I bought back when I was still a teenager, has had to be retrofitted with a cardboard panel taped over the buttons).  However that is a much bigger purchase, and requires a lot more evaluation.  The key, as far as I'm concerned, is mostly small additions that can eventually carry over to the house we buy when the timing is right.

It isn't all purchases, either: we've been very much living, the last few months especially, as though we were going to move.  This has meant not bothering to keep some small areas of our house (cupboards, closets) tidy.  Today I went through and attacked as many "culch" areas as I could, and the house really does feel better for it.  I'll go through the kitchen cabinets sometime soon as well.

3) Finally, realize that the feeling of want that I'm experiencing is really about something deeper, and even finding that perfect house wouldn't actually assuage it.  C.S. Lewis says it best, in The Weight of Glory: 

 "If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy,"

and also,

"The books or the music [or house!] in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

I've been forced to learn this lesson repeatedly in the past, especially when longing for a romantic relationship that was yet to be, or nostalgically missing a person or place from the past.  The real longing is for the joy those people or places, or that desired relationship, did or would bring into my life; joy that is a foretaste of heaven, but that exists only in so far as I keep seeking heaven, and don't seek those things in themselves.  When I've gone back to those places looking for that same joy, I find exactly what Lewis says: it is not there.  In the past, I've counseled myself to remember that what I'm really longing for is heaven, and to therefore seek God with all my heart in order to one day experience the real fulfillment of that want.  So really, that is the be all, end all, cure to wanting a house: to realize that I'm not really wanting an earthly house, so much as my heavenly home.  And in the meantime, to accept God's daily provision, and trust that He'll provide a bigger space, and earth to sink our roots into, when the time really is right.

My apologies for the LONG post, but I really wanted to share :)