God Is Not Competing With My Happiness

I used to think that every time God asked me to let go of something, He was asking me to become smaller.

I don't know if I would've said it out loud, but somewhere deep inside I believed that holiness meant saying goodbye to everything that made life beautiful. It almost felt as though the closer I got to God, the less color life would have.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

The closer I've grown to Him, the more alive I've become.

It's almost backwards from what I expected.

I laugh more now.

I notice beauty more now.

I enjoy ordinary afternoons more now.

Even my coffee tastes better when I'm not carrying the entire future on my shoulders.

I think I had unconsciously imagined God as someone who was constantly asking, "What are you willing to give up for Me?"

Now I wonder if He's been asking something entirely different.

"Will you let Me show you what actually satisfies your heart?"

Those are two completely different questions.

One is about deprivation.

The other is about freedom.

I've started noticing how often I reach for things hoping they'll quiet whatever is restless inside me. Sometimes it's distraction. Sometimes it's overthinking. Sometimes it's productivity. Sometimes it's the endless desire to figure everything out before tomorrow arrives.

None of those things are bad by themselves.

They just make terrible saviors.

Only God has ever been able to quiet my heart without demanding that I pretend it isn't hurting.

That's what amazes me about Him.

He never tells me to stop grieving.

He simply grieves with me until hope quietly returns.

He never asks me to ignore reality.

He teaches me how to live faithfully inside it.

He never shames my questions.

He gently reminds me that I don't need every answer in order to keep walking.

When I look back over this past year, I realize that so much of my spiritual life has been spent asking God to restore things I thought I had lost.

My marriage.

My peace.

My future.

My certainty.

And while I was asking Him to restore those things, He was quietly restoring something much deeper.

My relationship with Him.

I don't think He was withholding Himself until my circumstances improved.

I think He was patiently waiting for me to discover that He had been enough all along.

That doesn't mean the losses stopped hurting.

They still hurt.

Some days they still do.

But the pain no longer convinces me that I've been abandoned.

If anything, it has become one more place where I've discovered His faithfulness.

I'm beginning to understand why the saints speak about joy the way they do.

Not because their lives were easy.

Many of them suffered far more than I ever have.

But because they discovered that God doesn't compete with human happiness.

He fulfills it.

Maybe that's why every time I surrender something to Him, I eventually discover that He wasn't trying to leave me empty.

He was making room for something better.

Usually...

something much quieter.

Much deeper.

Much more lasting.

And if that's true...

then perhaps every invitation to trust Him has never been an invitation to lose.

It's always been an invitation to receive.

I think I'm finally starting to believe that.

💜