For many weeks leading into this past Christmas season I have been feeling a deepening unsettledness, something persistent, pressing, and specific. A general unsettledness is a familiar feeling for me. I have felt like an exile for years. and in this season of my life unsettledness is fitting. This is a season of saying goodbye to relationships I’ve loved over decades and the self I was with them. It is a season of transitions and thresholds, of diminishing physical capacities and deepening creative and spiritual ones. It is a season of farewells to what has been, and that tentative welcome to what is yet to be but is still unknown. I am homesick now in ways that become more pronounced by the day.
But the unease I feel recently is something more urgent than my deep and lingering homesickness. At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on this sharp unease, but I’ve felt it every day, like something out of joint needing to be put back into place. Something insistent refusing to be ignored. Then come mid-December I began to hear a counter reply in my spirit.
‘Stop, stand still, listen.‘
I believe that reply is addressed specifically to the work I would typically be doing now to get another full issue of Cultivating pulled together and published for this season. But I also believe it is speaking to something much deeper and broader for my life. What I hear in the waters of my soul, deep beneath the surface view is an unshakable discontent. Not the discontent born of grumbling and ingratitude. I am deeply grateful for the life I have been given. I count my blessings every day. Believe me when I say I am grateful. I know first-hand what it is to be homeless, addicted, poverty stricken, and lost. So how is it now as a woman who is well-married, well-provided for, and seeking the Lord daily with all my heart, that I can be discontent? I’ve seen astonishing answers to prayer in my lifetime. Why can I not just be content with the wonders that have been given so graciously to me? That is an important question. What I find in me is a discontent that is fundamentally bigger than me. It is not simply a complaining about what I have not being enough. It is the complaint of something needing to be made right, made whole, made complete. It is a yearning for a piece of the universe that includes me to be put back into its proper place.
What I feel is holy discontent.
Even now, reading those words in context, they are jarring. They seem incongruous, even opposed to each other. How can holiness keep company with discontent? How can discontent ever serve holiness? As believers we are taught through all our training in the faith to cultivate contentment and to practice resting in the circumstances in which we are placed. We are taught to bloom where we are planted and to make beautiful the surroundings we are given. We are taught to give thanks for what we have and to be faithfully present where we are. This is a practice I deeply believe in and it has marked my life. This beautiful website for Cultivating is an outward expression of that belief. So is the home I dwell in and the circle of friends and family I love.
So, I ask myself again ~ How can holiness keep company with discontent? How can discontent ever serve holiness?
Those two marry when they are bound by a truth they share. Discontent serves holiness when holiness demands that something be made right.
There is a story I would like to recount for you that gives answer to these two questions. This story is a hinge for much of my life, a story you may already be familiar with. It is a tale of holy discontent, vulnerability, surrender, fulfillment, and generational blessing. It is the story of Hannah, the prophet Samuel’s mother.
The first book of Samuel opens with a precise account of a woman’s discontent and heartache. Not a famous, rich, or powerful woman, Hannah was an obscure woman who would be unknown to any of us today were it not for what she did with her discontent. How she responded to it is given to us – men and women alike – as a model of acknowledging deep desire and naming it, taking it in vulnerability and submission to God, offering petition and sacrifice, surrendering it in a holy place, and being heard and answered by the Almighty. What Hannah desired with all her heart was a son so that the cultural shame of her barrenness would be ended and that her value be vindicated. She named and surrendered her deep discontent to the Lord. In doing that, the fulfillment of Hannah’s desire and discontent became a blessing that has touched every generation of God’s people since. It was profoundly, intimately personal to Hannah, yet the fulfillment of her desire brought something to pass that carried forward for generations beyond her counting. Her discontent was driven by a deep personal need: honour and value. This was not vanity. It was something that Hannah needed to bring peace to her soul. She was looking for her accuser to be vanquished in a holy way. She was looking to God for vindication. She was looking for an ache in her being to be mended. Hannah’s desire and discontent was not selfish. It was righteous and it was good. This is important to recognize.
The Almighty God did not mock Hannah, or scorn her voice or tears. He listened to the truthfulness of what she offered to Him. Her plea was for Him to right a wrong and it was within His power alone to do it. She recognised her powerlessness. Hannah came to Him vulnerable and humble, but also clear and unashamed. She did not demand or voice entitlement. Though she wept, she did not whine. When God fulfilled Hannah’s request it exceeded all of her imagining and exceeded the request itself. In addition to Him showing her “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living“, God made an enduring example of her approach to holy discontent as a model to His people from that time forward. Hannah’s name means “favour” or “grace.”
In some translations, the word used for ‘desire’ is ‘longing’. Longing is something far stronger and deeper than a mere wish, or wistful dream. It is not an arbitrary or passing want, or anything easily fulfilled. Longing’s roots are planted deep into the heart, the core of our being. No real and true longing will be moved from there, no matter how hard one might try to pull it out. That longing gives witness to our calling and it flags our essential telos. It can be called ‘longing’ because it does not go away quickly. It holds its ground over long periods of time. It is not something based on shifting interests. Circumstance or age do not change it. It is not something that can be changed without fulfilling it or killing the heart that bears it. It is an all or nothing kind of thing – either to be fulfilled or unrequited. As much as our deepest faith and deepest fear, our longings define us. To name it openly is to name who we really, truly are. This kind of longing must be reckoned with and accounted for. To die without facing it faithfully, is to have lived a half-life.
According to the Etymology dictionary, to long (as a verb) means to “yearn after, grieve for.” There is living truth in that phrase “grieve for” because grief does indeed accompany our unfulfilled longings. Longing colours our every day, named or unnamed. That is one of the core conditions of the human experience. The grief stemming from it is a grief to which we owe our attention. In fact, grief is so much a hallmark of true longing that often we experience the longing as a wordless ache in our heart before we can even identify or name it. This ache is important to recognise and to respect.
Let me ask you, when do you hurt or even cry over news that “should” make you happy for someone else’s advancement or achievement in a given area? When do you see someone doing something and find yourself unexplainably sad at the sight and find some part of yourself turning away and folding up inside? What causes you pain that seems irrational or unjustified? When do you feel passed by or like you are looking into windows of a house you cannot enter? Can you see a pattern or a specific? Make note of it.
On my desk, right beneath my laptop monitor, is a small silver brick stamped with a single question. I look at this every single time I sit down at my computer, which means every single day. What is the question?
“What would you attempt to do
if you knew you could not fail?”
I am willing to be still and hear the beating of my own soul and heart, and as I stop my frantic working and striving, as I look past my fears and failures, I can name it. I can name what I would attempt to do if I knew I could not fail.
There is a distinct parallel between discontent and fire. Both have the power for great destruction or great good, depending on how they are tended. They may lay a long time smouldering beneath the surface with embers hot but out of sight. Unrecognised and unattended, both can wreak utter destruction upon the unsuspecting and defenseless. Yet, when tended rightly both can keep us warm in the cold protecting us from apathy or despair. Both can be kindled into a gathering point, to share fellowship. Both can give us light in the darkness, guiding us on our way to our appointed destination.
What if we look at that longing, that unsettling fire of holy discontent, through new eyes and see it with trust and not suspicion, what might it tell us we are called to enflesh and bring to life? How might being truthful with it in all the ache it carries bring you closer into the presence of The Almighty as your Defender and Champion?
I can name my holy discontent and ache. Mine comes in pairs. They have both been held for decades. One is to move to a long, ranch style house in the Colorado country with a small barn (for Cultivating) and a big sky. This is “the house on the refrigerator” (a picture I posted there probably 20 years ago now, a house seemingly impossible to find). This is an earthly answer to homesickness. Two, to complete the design and launch of the Cultivating magazine in print this year. This answers a long held yearning to see and hold the tangible reality of what I have seen for years in my mind’s eye. Bringing this work to print is an act of beauty in defiance of despair, and singing beauty’s glorious song of love that triumphs.
These I need for my soul to be made whole and at peace.
Can you name your discontent and ache?
The featured image “A Winter Gathering Fire” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and used with her permission for Cultivating.
Special Note:
For this winter season of 2022, The Cultivating Project is taking a time away from our “full-feast” publication offerings to pursue personal reflection and rest as a team. The content on site will be served up slower for this season. We are grateful for your patience and understanding and very much hope that you will join us in this same endeavor. May we each be able to truthfully and respectfully voice our holy discontent and watch for the Lord to answer us in the days ahead.
Thank you always for your good company with us!
For further reading: Denise Armstrong’s beautiful piece about Hannah in the Cultivating Christmastide 2021 issue.
Lancia E. Smith is an author, photographer, business owner, and publisher. She is the founder and publisher of Cultivating Oaks Press, LLC, and the Executive Director of The Cultivating Project, the fellowship who create content for Cultivating Magazine. She has been honoured to serve in executive management, church leadership, school boards, and Art & Faith organizations over 35 years.
Now empty nesters, Lancia & her husband Peter make their home in the Black Forest of Colorado, keeping company with 200 Ponderosa Pine trees, a herd of mule deer, an ever expanding library, and two beautiful black cats. Lancia loves land reclamation, website and print design, beautiful typography, road trips, being read aloud to by Peter, and cherishes the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and George MacDonald. She lives with daily wonder of the mercies of the Triune God and constant gratitude for the beloved company of Cultivators.
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This is so true…I love the way you call this a holy discontent. Kind of like CS Lewis talking about our longing for holiness. So so good.
As I finished reading I took a moment to think about what you’ve written. I think my longings at this stage of my life don’t have as much to do with what I want for myself but for those I love. I’m not sure how that applies…I don’t think I can have peace in this world as long as I see those I love going in the wrong direction with their faith. That is my biggest discontent and ache. A huge grief in my heart.
(@jennylovescharlie)
Jenny, thank you. I am convicted that this kind of discontent does in fact lead to holiness and stems out of the longing for what is holy to be manifest and enfleshed in our earthly living. It is so uncomfortable to look at and admit though, isn’t it? It means being willing to live with an ache for long periods of time while the work to fulfill it is being carried out. I share this ache for those I love, too, who seem to be headed in the wrong direction. Yet my deep resting place is simply that the Lord is in control. He made them, called them, and He is sovereign. I not only “cannot see all ends”, I cannot even see more than a sliver of what is truly going in their lives right now. My mom told me last night to remember that the Lord is in control, that His ways are not our ways, and to thank Him AGAIN for His work of redemption for them. I have to go back to that again and again. When I pray the prayer of prevenient thanks (thanks in faith before I see the outcome) I am fighting back with the Lord against the work of the enemy. Keep praying with trust and hope for your loved ones. Their story isn’t over yet, nor is ours, and He is a great God. Blessings!
Oh yes. This is a powerful piece, Lancia and I can feel the Spirit pressing in upon me to contemplate my answers to your question. One is clear: I too am homesick for a house. Mine is a cottage placed near water with room for my art studio. The other is not so clear but I love the tools you have given me to pursue this further. Thank you, as always, for deepening my walk.
Betsy, thank you for your encouragement and faithful presence with Cultivating. Let us pray for each other and the houses we are longing for. It is a good thing to want to be somewhere – to be both a blessing and to be blessed in place and presence. The Lord knows the longings of our hearts. I think He often has to wait on us to realize how serious those longings are before He can bring them to pass. I am so glad to know that what I can share through Cultivating is of help to you and I will, as the Lord enables and empowers me, continue to do the same as we press on for our finish lines. Blessings and much gratitude to you, dear heart!
So deeply, deeply grateful for room to sit in the holy discontent with you, to see it as purposeful, as blessed, even—to trust alongside my fellow Cultivators, that the ache and wrestle are signs of God’s unrelenting Presence, and always an invitation to press further in.
my longing, lifelong at this point seems so futile that to continue to long is scarier than giving up. I cannot/won’t speak of it here.
I also realize that my first reaction about your house you envision was that it wasn’t important enough for God — although if asked I would have told you that of course it is. I have much joy in my life along with sorrow upon sorrow. I am grateful for support from my family, a group in inner circle friends, a godly counselor and Jesus right were with me, it feels safer most times not to hope. Yes in it all, Jesus is nearer than ever.
Kris, thank you. You have so faithfully paved a way for this search by your own example over these past two years. I am honoured to be in fellowship with you and to tread this road Home together.
Carol, thank you for sharing so honestly and vulnerably. I understand that feeling and that fear. How hard it is to hold our heart out naked and longing to a God so powerful He can break it and does sometimes do just that. It takes a peculiar mix of of nearly subliminal trust, courage, and choice of life to believe that He does indeed care about our longings, even when sometimes they are not met the way we yearn for them to be. It is a kind of practicing for Heaven to lean into that, even through tears, and still rest in Him. I do not know if I will get the house on earth that I have longed for. Perhaps it will not be mine till Home, but I trust He will lead us to where He will meet us and be with us, in sorrow and in joy. There is plenty of heartache in our lives right now, each of us, and somehow even that heart will be mended as we are ourselves grown and cultivated. I know what it is to not want to hope because it feels safer, and at first maybe it is. But at least in my own experience I find that if I do not take the risk of hoping, then my heart begins to die. And whether I will for this or no, somewhere in me is a deep, deep, joie de vivre, that prevails even when I most feel despair. I pray for you that your joy will multiply and wash through your sorrows. I pray that for me, too, these days. May you be crowned with grace and find hope come to keep you company all yours days.
One of the things I find myself thinking of in all this about unfulfilled longing is C.S. Lewis’s statement about God giving us pleasant inns along the way, but never letting us mistake here for Home. In case you have not seen this, my friend Ashlee Cowles writes something beautiful about this here – https://cultivatingoakspress.com/pleasant-inns-along-the-way/ I am praying for you!
Lancia, Thank you for this. Those first sentences are quite meaningful for me to read tonight. I have sensed you have known heartache although I know little about you. Thank you for what you write and share in this space.
Hello, this is my first time reading and then commenting her. I loved your point about us all praying and encouraging each other about the houses that we desire. This is mine also and it is something that my husband and I are actively seeking, having moved 25 times in 25 years of marriage. Your little brick message has been in my head all afternoon, challenging me – what would I do if I could not fail? Thank you from a reader who loves the good, true and beautiful in country Australia. P.S. I found you in one of those beautiful, Spirit-led ways. I listened to Joy Clarkson’s podcasts and when we went to Scotland, we travelled to St. Andrew’s for afternoon tea with her, then I found Malcolm Guite through her. Now you and your team. What a blessing you are.
Carol, sorrow, trauma, and heartache have marked the borderlands of my life since before my birth, with no exaggeration. They have followed me through much of my life, yet so too has an infinitely indefatigable Goodness. I am blessed to be loved and relentlessly pursued by the Holy One. He is without question my one true Love. This space is a way of giving Him honour and bringing water to fellow travelers. I am glad indeed to have you join us as we head Home.
Cate, welcome! Thank you for joining us and sharing a little bit of your own story with such kind and encouraging words. We dearly love Joy Clarkson and her sister Sarah, and of course our long time friend, Malcolm Guite. It is surely a blessing to have you in this kindred fellowship! What a delight to know you hail from Australia! That does my heart such good. I will keep you and your husband in prayer as you also search for the house the Lord is calling you to. Please keep me posted! Blessings and every grace to you and yours!
Lancia, I’m back to reread your hauntingly beautiful words that have been resonating so deeply. Living in this inbetween tensions, deeply stretching. A couple of years back in the midst of holy discontent at first it felt like parts of me dying in the waiting but I have also grown to recognise, in the words of George Eliot, “It seems to me that we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive”. Thinking of you. Thank you for all the seasonal content in this space.
Lorraine, thank you so much for your kind words and feedback. I am grateful. Yes, it does indeed feel like a kind of dying as we enter into it, and then as we live into it seems to burn away an outer shell of self and peeling back layers to reach something closer to the core truth. George Eliot says it so truly. That quote became the root source for Sarah Clarkson’s exquisite blog site. https://sarahclarkson.com/thoroughly-alive Praying for you through your season of holy discontent and for you to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of your living!
A seemingly misguided series of clicks has landed me on this blog post, but now I clearly see it was designed destiny. Further confirmation, or better, confrontation of a mysterious new season for me. Thank you for being a messenger to awaken me. I know a new season, and adventure awaits me. I pray that I will serve the new season well.
Don, here’s to new seasons and the winding paths that take us there! Welcome to Cultivating! We are glad to have you with us. 🙂
I am so grateful for these words, for the permission they extend, and the way you offer your journey to others. It’s something to have struggle and holy discontent normalized here, and to be reminded that this is an invitation to growth and freedom. Thank you, Lancia. And for all you do to curate this beautiful space.
Amy, thank you as ever for all the grace you bring to me and to The Cultivating Project. I am so very grateful for you! Thank you for bearing such a faithful witness to producing fruit even in seasons of heartache and longing. You glimmer so beautifully!