Was It Enough?

A few nights ago Kelly and I were sitting at a little place right off the dock in Positano, drinking a glass of white wine, which is crazy because I never liked white wine until we started drinking it in Italy.

We rented a boat and spent the afternoon easing in and out of all these little coves along the Amalfi coast.

And here we were at dinner, eating pasta, talking about the boys, our friends and family, basically life from a 10,000-foot view. And I noticed I wasn’t running the scoreboard in my head or scanning the horizon for the next problem. I was just sitting there with my wife, watching the boats come in and out of the harbor one at a time.

Then a thought showed up.

I imagined heaven. I imagined actually making it — standing in front of Jesus for the first time. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have a LOT of questions when I get up there. I actually have a list, a real mental list of theological, personal, and curiosity type questions about why God made us humans and this planet a certain way.

But in this little thought at the dinner table, I didn’t ask first. He did.

You’d think he would open with the thing we’re all secretly hoping for. Well done. You made it. Come on in.

That’s not what happened in my head. He didn’t congratulate me or ask me about all the good things I did here on earth. He said two things, and then He asked me one question.

I gave you everything you needed.
Was that enough?

And that’s it. If you take a second and re-read those sentences, I’m guessing it might hit you too, because I think most of us have been spending our whole lives getting ready for a different question. We thought the test at the end was going to be about whether we did enough — built enough, earned it enough, pushed hard enough, sacrificed enough, stacked up enough evidence to deserve the life we’d been given here on earth and up in heaven. That was the exam we’d been studying for.

But he cancelled it in one sentence, and he was asking whether I believed it, whether or not I was actually experiencing it.

(Quick note before we keep going. I’m not telling you this is THE convo you’ll have with Jesus, I have no clue what the first five minutes of heaven will actually look like, so please calibrate accordingly. This was just a thought at a dinner table. But it grabbed me and it hasn’t let go, and I think it’s pointing at something true.)

Joy can only grow in one place.

When I think about the word ENOUGH, I keep coming back to the root concept, which I think is joy, I think joy grows in one place and that is contentment. Joy is the crop, it’s what we want, but contentment is the soil, it’s what we need. Joy will grow if we give it the right conditions, but it will never grow in ground that is at war with the present.

We may hear the word “content” and think it means satisfied, but those are not the same word. You can be content and unsatisfied at the exact same time. I might not be satisfied with my business or the bank account, but I can still be content. Satisfaction is local, it’s tied to a condition, and conditions move, so it will never hold still. You’ll go your whole life satisfied about some things and unsatisfied about others.

Contentment is the baseline underneath, and it doesn’t run on any one condition. It’s a choice that we make to accept our lives and ourselves. It’s the quiet sense that what I already have is enough for me to be all the way here, right now, even while I work to change the things I want to change. You can be fifty pounds overweight and be completely content. You may want to lose the weight, but you can still be content. Satisfaction asks questions. Contentment doesn’t need to.

Joy is what grows out of that contented spirit, and most people who think they’re chasing happiness are actually chasing joy. They want relief from the voice that keeps telling them they’re one more achievement away from being allowed to breathe. One more deal. One more number. One more trip. One more better version of themselves. One more month where everything finally behaves and nobody needs anything and the inbox stays empty and the mirror is kind in the morning. Good luck with that. I would genuinely love to meet the person whose life finally behaved long enough for them to become joyful when everything aligned perfectly.

A Man in a Cell

Some of the best proof built around this idea is a guy who wrote what many people think is the most joyful letter in the history of the world in one of the worst possible places.

Paul wrote to the Philippians while he was in prison. So imagine him being in that cell with no freedom or comfort or promise he would ever walk out, and then writing a letter so full of joy that people are talking about it thousands of years later.

This proves that joy cannot run on circumstances, or his really would have died right there in that darkness.

He writes this; “I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.”

Now focus on one word with me for a second.

Learned.

Paul did not say he was born content or that it showed up once life finally got good.

His life didn’t get good while he was in prison, and my guess is he probably learned this feeling before he ever went in.

Which means the good news for the rest of us is that contentment is not a personality trait a few lucky people get handed at birth.

It’s not for the naturally peaceful people who drink tea and keep plants alive and somehow know where all their important papers are.

Contentment is a skill.
We learn it.

So you do it badly, then less badly, then a little bit better, and then a little more honestly until one day there’s enough solid ground under you to grow something.

And if Paul can feel contentment in a prison cell, I can probably quit telling myself I’m going to get to it once my life finally settles down.

And I’ll be honest — as I wrote that sentence I felt a little annoyed, because I’d prefer a loophole. Some version of faith where I get to say, yes Lord, contentment, absolutely, huge fan, just let me close this one deal and lose a little weight and get my friend back first. But that’s not how it works.

The Orphan and the Son

I’ve talked a lot about the higher self and the lower self, two voices in one head that want completely different things. Sitting on that dock in Positano, I realized that contentment and discontentment aren’t moods that fall on you out of the sky. They’re simply which self is driving.

The lower self is like an orphan. It’s already decided that enough is just one more thing away, so it’s always reaching and measuring, trying to grab what it can before somebody else gets there first. Drop the lower self into any room and it will find, almost immediately, what is wrong — with the room, with the people in it, with whatever is missing.

The higher self is a child who knows his Father. It already knows it’s loved, so it isn’t grabbing or reaching for anything. It gives and builds and creates. Drop the higher self into that same room and it finds, just as quickly, everything that’s right.

You can have both of these perspectives on the exact same day. You can live in completely different worlds based on which part of you you’re living from. I know that sounds almost too simple, like something you’d see on a coffee mug in a store that also sells candles named after emotions, but I want you to actually try it.

I want you to sit down right now and create two lists.

On one side, list everything wrong with your life.

And on the other side, I want you to write down everything right.

And if you spend 10 or 15 minutes doing this, my guess is that the what’s right list is two, three, four, five, even 10 times bigger.

So now you have dozens (more) reasons to be content.

And these reasons will create the soil for joy to grow over time, as long as we focus on them.

The Woman in the Pew

I overheard a real estate agent telling some people about her son’s first communion. As she started describing it I imagined the little guy in his suit, nervous and proud, and then she dropped this: she had managed to lock up two new listings inside church during the mass, while waiting for her son’s name to be called. She was actually proud of it.

I thought it was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard.

She was not at her son’s communion. Her body was in the building, but the rest of her was somewhere else, reaching and grabbing for life instead of living it. That’s the orphan — standing inside the gift but counting something else.

And if we’re honest, none of us are above her. I’ve been in beautiful places and missed them entirely. I’ve sat across from people I love with my head somewhere else. I’ve stood inside the answers to prayers I prayed for years and treated them like interruptions. I know exactly what it’s like to be in the room and not really be in the room.

I also believe the guy who can’t be content on a Tuesday in Ohio doesn’t get saved by a romantic trip to Italy. It’s not how it works, it really comes down to a choice.

Joy requires me to receive the actual life in front of me instead of waiting for a better one.

It’s hard to receive your wife when part of you is living in the future.

It’s hard to receive your kids when their story has no point and your brain has eighteen tabs open.

It’s hard to receive your body when you’re mad at it for not looking like the version of you that exists in your imagination and, conveniently, has never had a stressful week or eaten tortilla chips standing over the sink.

It’s hard to receive your work when it’s imperfect and unfinished and still asking things from you.

Contentment is simply not lying to yourself. It’s telling the truth from the truest part of you. The orphan says, this is not enough, so I am not enough. The son says, I am enough, so this is enough. That is a completely different life.

Where Am I?

There’s a small question I use to come back to this place.

Where am I?

That’s it, literally, where am I right now? I’m at dinner with my wife. I’m in the car with my kids. I’m walking the farm at sunset. I’m standing in the kitchen while one of the boys is telling me something that’s important to them, which makes it important to me.

That’s where LIFE is, and asking that question is how I receive this version of life instead of just appraising it.

Let’s go back to that dinner table in Italy and figure out what Jesus was really asking. He wasn’t asking me to grade the gift. He was asking whether I received it — whether I let it all the way in, whether I lived like a son inside what He had already given, or whether I let the orphan keep counting what was missing.

And I don’t think we have to die to answer that question. I think we get asked it every morning, and we get to answer with one decision. The game you really get to play is simply trying to be the person who appreciates this gift of life more than anyone else.

Joy is the receipt.
It’s the proof the gift got received.

I want mine to show I lived like a son.