Hold Contentment With an Open Hand

I believe God gave us the gift of dreaming. Dreaming is healthy for the soul. It allows us to imagine that what we see today isn’t all there will ever be. A dream can breathe hope into a difficult season and give us the courage to take the next step when we don’t yet know where the road will lead.

But I’ve also learned that dreams can become heavy too, especially when they take longer than we thought.

Excitement comes at the beginning, when a dream first takes shape. We imagine what could be, pray about it, make plans, and begin moving toward it. But then sometimes months turn into years. Doors we thought would open remain closed. Progress comes much more slowly than we expected, or there are seasons when it feels like nothing is moving forward at all.

Something that once gave us hope can slowly begin stealing our joy.

I was talking with a friend recently about this very thing. We were talking about dreams we have carried and the difficulty of waiting for something we believe God has placed on our hearts. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, a sentence came out of my mouth that I had never said before.

“We have to hold contentment with an open hand.”

It was one of those moments when the words seemed to carry more wisdom than I could take credit for. The more I’ve thought about them since, the more I’ve realized how much I need to learn to live them.

A tension exists between dreaming about what could be and being grateful for what already is.

If I hold too tightly to the dream, I can begin treating my present life like a waiting room. I tell myself that I’ll be satisfied when the door finally opens, when the prayer is answered, when the resources come, when the vision becomes reality.

Without realizing it, I can become so focused on the next season that I fail to recognize the goodness God has placed in this one.

But I don’t believe contentment means we stop dreaming either.

Contentment isn’t resignation. It isn’t deciding that nothing should ever change or convincing ourselves not to desire something more. God created us with imagination, creativity, hope, and the ability to envision possibilities beyond what we can currently see.

We don’t have to choose between one or the other. What if we practiced holding them together?

Paul wrote in Philippians 4 that he had learned to be content whatever his circumstances. I love that he used that word. Contentment wasn’t something that happened to him when everything finally worked out. He learned it while life was still changing around him.

To hold contentment with an open hand means I can look at my life today and say, Thank You, Lord. There is goodness here.

And with that same open hand, I can still say, And I can’t wait to see what You might do next.

I can deeply desire something that isn’t here yet without despising what is here now.

As I sat with all of this, I started thinking about the women we serve at Amadea.

For someone who has spent a long time simply surviving, dreaming can require tremendous courage. When so much energy has gone into making it through today, imagining a different tomorrow may feel almost impossible.

Then healing begins and hope starts to return.

Eventually there may come a moment when she begins to wonder, “What could my life become?” Having seen this moment in some of the women, I know it’s a beautiful thing.

We want women to dream. We want them to discover gifts they had forgotten, imagine possibilities they couldn’t see before, set goals, learn new skills, and begin believing that their hardest season does not determine the rest of their story.

But we also want them to know that their worth isn’t waiting somewhere in the future. They don’t become more valuable when they reach the goal. They don’t become more loved when everything is finally put back together.

They are His beloved right here. Right now. There is life abundant in this season, too.

So keep dreaming. Keep praying. Keep building. Keep imagining what God might do with the story He is still writing.

But while you wait, don’t miss the life He is giving you today.

There is goodness here, too.

Hold contentment with an open hand.