The Spirit of Discontentment

You know all the memes about dancing through the storm and what not? It's so easy to pin those and hypothetically imagine myself doing that but in reality I realize even when I pin those pictures or write ideally what I know to be true realistically many times I fall under a spirit of discontentment and no amount of positive pins or idealistic posts will save me until I acknowledge I am under the spirit of discontentment. I guess like many things acknowledging you have a problem is the first step.

I don't know why lately I am more susceptible to this spirit but I am. Last year at work I just made a decision to be discontent with a lot of things. I'm not saying I didn't have a good reason but it didn't help matters. Then this fall when I decided to go back to work and had an unsure feeling if this is what I really wanted or if I was just doing it because I needed to I feel it creeping in again. Either way I should have just accepted it and moved on with a grateful heart which I am now. But I didn't. Instead I began to delve into what got us in this situation. Then from there it spread to everything-discontentment.

The time discontentment really plagues me is around the holidays. I was dazing off and for some reason thought about eating out. We used to eat out, usually Mexican, every Friday. So it was this last Friday and I realized how much has changed. We would not be eating out this Friday because we don't really eat out anymore. It is one of the many things we are doing to save money to help pay off med school loans, our children's school tuition, and mounting debt that is typical when a doctor has over a decade of training but also life doesn't stop for training so beginning a family during training contributes.

Anyway, I remembered last year at this time-Thanksgiving day actually we were moving-literally packing boxes, cleaning out pantries, and moving the day of Thanksgiving. My whole family on my side was at my aunt's house celebrating and as I was cleaning out the pantry of our old house I was purely miserable.

I had been packing for hours, days, it was Thanksgiving Day. My extended family on my side were all together except for me and my husband and kids. I remember reaching up in the pantry high up and I swear I could hear my whole family just laughing together and carrying on. I realized my cell phone had been in the car all day so I gladly took a break and went and checked my phone. Sure enough there was a message. They were all laughing in the background like I knew they would but then they passed the phone around to each other and every relative left me a Thanksgiving message.

I sat in the car and cried. I cried because I was happy they thought of me. I cried because I was exhausted and miserable. I cried because I was so tired of the struggle of residency and medical training and no stability.

What got me thinking about all this though was because after we got everything in our new house that night we went to Cracker Barrel-the restaurant. My kids and husband were laughing, cheerful, and carrying on that night and I was miserable. Purely miserable. I remember the wait on Thanksgiving night felt like hours but we waited standing the whole time. About a month before I had just had a total hysterectomy and while waiting to be seated after moving boxes all day I was in so much pain. I couldn't really relay that information to my husband and kids because they just wouldn't understand.

I remember going to the bathroom just so I could sit down for a few minutes. It's amazing how discontent I was at that moment. Emotionally, physically, spiritually drained.

But looking back I began to think eating Thanksgiving dinner with my husband and kids at Cracker Barrel couldn't have been that bad. And we were moving to a much larger more comfortable house so I had that to look forward to.

Eventually 4 days later we did have Thanksgiving just the 4 of us when every bag and box was unpacked. And I was so proud that we got it all done during the break.

This Thanksgiving we are thinking about visiting home. So I am thinking about how much I would have loved that last year with all that went down. But the spirit of discontentment doesn't care the situation. You can be traveling, staying home during a holiday, in a storm, it hits at random will.


I know it sounds weird but the holidays is the perfect time for discontentment to start. There is the pressure of being in the holiday spirit, gift buying, extended family, etc.

It is hard for us living so many hours away from family. It is a grueling drive and too costly to fly whenever we want to visit. Then there's the issue of time divided by many many loving people that want to spend time with us and that is just family. Guiltily we many times can't even squeeze in a day or half a day for our friends.

Leave it to the spirit of discontentment to take a holiday like THANKSgiving and try to drain all joy from it in the details.

This is a negative spirit that honestly I have allowed to plague me in life-as a mother, as a daughter and daughter in law, as a teacher, as a wife.

But I am realizing that I CAN put a stop to it.

Here are some of the steps I am working on to extinguish discontentment in my life.

1. Respond immediately to those who thrust guilt at me.

Let's face it many family or friends do not know what we go through daily so if you have that one person in your life that preys on you with guilt-don't let them. If you have a member of your family that tries to manipulate with guilt-tell them no. Put an end to it. I'm not good at this but working on it.

2. End sarcasm. I can be very sarcastic with my husband. Usually it stems from a spirit of discontentment not humor. But it never helps a situation.

3. Quit comparing.

It doesn't matter if so and so 's kids play more sports, take more lessons, travel more, etc.

4. Live my OWN life and understand I am on my OWN journey.

5. Stop negative thinking in it's tracks. Metacognition-thinking about my thinking.

6. This has been my worst-quit talking about it-start praying about it.

7. When drowning in discontentment take time off from social media.

8. Count my blessings-literally count them and write them down.

9. And lastly live in the moment. Don't anticipate what others' will say, think, be unhappy about, expect. Just live in the moment trying to be content with the reality of it.

If anyone else is muddling through the holidays wondering am I enough? Did I do enough? Will I visit enough? Did I give enough? Just know you did and quit. Just quit questioning and try to be content with your situation and take all of the goodness in and don't let discontentment in! It's that simple.