Mistaking Happiness for Home

Forgive me this intro that sounds more like a bad start to an infomercial, but I have to ask, have you ever felt unsettled? Discontent? Like some purpose you should be filling isn’t being lived out?

I’m curious because it’s how I’ve felt lately. Despite the adventures and blessings that surround me, there’s still an underlying sense that there should be more. I seek and seek and seek some more for this “settled happiness and security” that keeps evading me. 

I realized an important difference this week in how to view that sense of more. The world says becoming the best possible version of yourself, achieving that lifelong dream, or making a renowned name for yourself are the keys to unlocking your full potential and that more for you. As if it could be reached if we strive enough.

But what if accepting that more can not and will not be reached on this temporal earth is the true release from the unsettled, discontent, purposeless fear we’re feeling? Maybe the greatest freedom will be found…

Read over this C.S. Lewis quote at least twice.

“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God…Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

(Read it again! Gah, it’s sooo good and on point!)

Let us never mistake this world for home. He allows fun and merriment, and glimpses of what we were created for/what we will be returning to one day, but we can also accept that on earth we’ll never feel constant, settled happiness and security!

That will only be depressing to the one who doesn’t have an active hope in God. As a believer in God’s omniscience, He knows best for me, for you, and for our mindsets. He allows that sense of unsettledness, with peeks into happiness and security, like short stays at an inn, so we get a taste of what eternity will be like.

I realized this week and after reading this Lewis quote to accept that more will only be glimpsed and not wholly reached in this life. I must trust Him in the waiting; believe the discontentment has its purpose; and return my gaze to Him when it starts wandering to the securities of this world as my identity.

I hope this encourages you or touches a part of your life as it did for me. Please share any thoughts or questions in the comment section below!

stay lovely,
the tall girl

 

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