Eve’s Daughter

“There’s got to be more to life than this!!!”

I am so tired of this life that I live. And I’ve been tired and frustrated with my life for a long time now. Well, I consider a few years to be a long time, maybe that’s not long for some. Oh, and don’t worry, when I say “I am tired of this life that I live” I’m NOT feeling or being suicidal, rather, what I am saying is, I am tired of not living the life I’ve been created to live and I’m tired of settling for less.

In an earlier post entitled ‘Follow Your Heart’ I wrote about Tim and I ‘following our hearts’ and this post is kind of a follow-on from that. I’ve been thinking and saying ‘there’s got to be more to life than this!’ for a while now. I reckon it’s been about three years that I have been feeling dissatisfied with the life that I’m living; and this feeling of dissatisfaction, of ‘there’s got to be more’ has really intensified over the last few months.

Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly we have realised that the suburban lifestyle and all that goes with it is just not for us; it’s just not who we are, or how we want to live life. I understand that for many though, this is the life for them and they are very happy with it. A little later you will find in this post my “tirade” about living in the suburbs and not being truly alive - this is NOT an attack on those people who live this kind of life. I guess it’s more of a venting session on how the ’suburban lifestyle’ is killing ME!

But before I go into the tirade, the following is a small excerpt from my post ‘‘Follow Your Heart’ which gives you a small taste of what I have been feeling.

…if I have to continue living this life, which for me is a ’suburban nightmare’ I would go insane and slide into depression. When I have considered the possibility of not going and having to continue on in this life as it is currently I am overwhelmed with emotion, and it is not of the positive variety either! There’s got to be more to life than what it currently is!!

We’ve tried the suburban life, we even bought into it for a while, and all the while, it has been slowly killing our hearts and souls. We were deceived by the job, the house, the money, the convenience etc, which when it comes down to it, for us, is just a lie because it is not what our hearts were created for. This kind of life is not the life that we were created to live. And because we did not follow our hearts we were suffocating…

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this previously anywhere on ‘Eve’s Daughter’ - if I have, please forgive me for repeating myself. I am a country girl at heart - true, I grew up in the suburbs, down on the Mornington Peninsula, not too far from the beach, on a quarter of an acre block (pretty much unheard of where I’m living now) and we used to stay at friend’s farm in South Gippsland every May and September holidays (back when I went to school there were only three terms, not four!) so I love my space, I love having views around me.

It has always been a dream of mine to live in the country, preferably on a “farm” (don’t want to work it myself though - have enough trouble keeping a house clean let alone doing all that other stuff!). And we actually did it for the first ten years of our married life. And then God called us to move into the suburbs to be closer and more accessible to the people who were a part of our church. At first I didn’t want to leave the farm, however, after finding rats in my baby’s drawers I was starting to think that maybe leaving wouldn’t be such a bad idea afterall. Anyway, the church moved into its new premises and we moved into our new house - and it was cool!

The first couple of years were okay, in the sense that we didn’t notice that we were being sucked into believing that suburban lifestyle was “good” for us and we were “happy”. We bought into the lies, or we sold out, whatever tag you want to put on it, but the thing is, we just didn’t notice. We didn’t notice that we’d put all our dreams on hold, that everything revolved around the job and having enough money to pay the bills and the rent and all that kind of stuff; we didn’t notice that our hearts were being stifled, that we’d bought into the busyness of our culture.

And then there was the other stuff; I know now that they were lies from the devil, but at the time I was lacking in discernment, so I listened, believed it and took it on board. Something God is helping me deal with, one of my wounds, is where I valued other people’s opinion of me more than anything else, more than God’s opinion of me!

Probably the biggest one was, we were told by our leaders that other people found it difficult to relate to us - we were too weird (we’re a bit hippy, a bit alternative, a bit left of centre - not much really; compared to ‘real’ hippies, we’re pretty normal!) and we were a bit too full-on and passionate about God and our church. So it was suggested, that we become more normal, and fit in a bit better. I can’t speak for Tim, but for me, well instead of asking God his opinion and what God wanted us to do, I just accepted what was said and took it on board. I mean, they were our leaders and we respected them and their opinion.

So we started becomming more “normal” and less weird; it did come with some great side benefits - we actually went out and bought ourselves some nice furniture instead of just hanging on to all our second hand stuff. And because doing things like that made us feel good, (and they still do, two years on and I still get a thrill when I look at our couches and table) we thought our leaders must have been right, to be truthful, I probably didn’t think much about it at all. Little did I know just how bad it was for my heart!

Now, I’m not saying that we get rid of all our material possessions or having lots of stuff is bad - I like “stuff” and “things” - the problem comes when the “stuff” and “things” takeover your life and in some ways they have. I’m a self-confessed magpie of all things that come with a memory - I keep cards, gifts, kids pictures, tickets to special things… the idea is that they will be in scrapbooks, unfortunately they haven’t got there yet, right now they are in boxes instead! The trouble I find with getting rid of some of those things is that I realise later I made a mistake and perhaps I really should have kept that… not necessarily because I like it, but because of the importance of the attached memories.

Hmmm. As I sort through things in our packing up of our house I guess I need to pray about what I keep and what goes. I’m not so attached to things like furniture, although I do really like our couches and I love our bedroom suite. If God asked me to give away our furniture, I could probably do it, although I’d struggle a bit when it came to the couches and I would struggle heaps when it came to the bedroom suite! I love our bedroom furniture! However, I do believe, and hope, that if God ever asked me to do that, I could let it go. I think I might need to know for sure though!

I blamed my dissatisfaction with my life on our house - it was too small, not enough rooms, not enough space inside and out, and being in the middle of the suburbs, we’re only on a small block with a small backyard. So we looked into buying a house, but we just didn’t have it financially together enough to do more than fantasize about it! Now I see that as a blessing because right now, as we’re planning on ‘up and leaving’ to travel around Australia on a physical and spiritual journey we don’t have a mortgage. (To follow our adventure as we travel around Australia, check out The Great Adventure).

Anyway, I kept looking at houses in the area, hoping that somehow, something would happen and we could move into a bigger place and I got sucked into the dream of owning your own house and almost at the point of doing almost anything to get it. And it’s only now as I write this that I can see it, we were (well I was anyway!) getting drawn in, ‘hook, line and sinker’ without even noticing. Our hearts began to wilt and wither, to shrivel up, but even then, we didn’t notice it that much.

We knew we were discontent, but we didn’t search too deeply and as I said, I blamed it on the house being too small. As far as I was concerned, if we had a bigger house everything would be better! I was deceived and didn’t know it! Funny about that, the whole point of being deceived is that you don’t know you’re being decieved! If you’re lucky, or in our case, open to being led by God you can overcome the deception - for us it took a while though.

We had been deceived, lulled into a place where we could be trapped, we’d let ourselves get sucked into the ’suburban lifestyle’ and all the lies that came with it. The wool, the veil, had been quite successfully pulled over our eyes.

The following comes from the Ransomed Heart Daily Email I received on October 10. By now we had well and truly figured out that we had been deceived and sucked into a life that was NOT the life we had been created to live and the wheels had already been set in motion. God has called us out, we are to travel (which is something we’ve always wanted to do) around Australia, to seek him out in his creation, to know him more, to collect people’s stories and discover what is next in our adventure. However, the following aptly describes how we had been feeling and what we’d been doing prior to having the veil lifted and being able to see with new eyes.

In the quiet moments of the day we sense a nagging within, a discontentment, a hunger for something else. But because we have not solved the riddle of our existence, we assume that something is wrong – not with life, but with us. Everyone else seems to be getting on with things. What’s wrong with me? We feel guilty about our chronic disappointment. Why can’t I just learn to be happier in my job, in my marriage, in my church, in my group of friends? You see, even while we are doing other things, “getting on with life,” we still have an eye out for the life we secretly want. When someone seems to have gotten it together we wonder how did they do it? Maybe if we read the same book, spent time with them, went to their church, things would come together for us as well. You see, we can never entirely give up our quest. As May reminds us,

When the desire is too much to bear, we often bury it beneath frenzied thoughts and activities or escape it by dulling our immediate consciousness of living. It is possible to run away from the desire for years, even decades, at a time, but we cannot eradicate it entirely. It keeps touching us in little glimpses and hints in our dreams, our hopes, our unguarded moments.

He says that even though we sleep, our desire does not. “It is who we are.” We are desire. It is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Not a symphony has been written, a mountain climbed, an injustice fought or a love sustained apart from desire. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. Our desire, if we will listen to it, will save us from committing soul-suicide, the sacrifice of our hearts on the alter of “getting by.” The same old thing is not enough. It never will be. (The Journey of Desire, 10,11)

Then there was this also from Ransomed Heart Daily Email, on the 27th September.

Yes, dear friends, we are already God’s children, and we can’t even imagine what we will be like when Christ returns. But we do know that when he comes we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. (1 John 3:2 NLT)
We have an expression that we use to describe someone who’s out of sorts, who’s not acting like the person we know her to be: “She’s just not herself today.” It’s a marvelous, gracious phrase, for in a very real way, no one is quite himself today. There is more to us than we have seen. I know my wife is a goddess. I know she is more beautiful than she imagines. I have seen it slip out, seen moments of her glory. Suddenly, her beauty shines through, as though a veil has been lifted.

All of us have moments like this, glimpses of our true creation. They come unexpectedly and then fade again. Life for the most part keeps our glory hidden, cloaked by sin, or sorrow, or merely weariness. When I see an old woman, doubled over with arthritis, the hard years etched into her face, I want to cry, Eve, what happened? How truly wonderful it will be to see her in her youth again, the full flower of her beauty restored.

When the disciples saw Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, they got a peek at his glory. He was radiant, beautiful, magnificent. He was Jesus, the Jesus they knew and loved—only more so. And we shall be glorious as well. Jesus called himself the Son of man to state clearly that he is what mankind was meant to be. What we see in Jesus is our personal destiny.

(The Journey of Desire , 116–17)

Hmmm, a glory peeking out. I guess this is another reason why I am so disatisfied with life. I know there is meant to be more than the life that I’m living. And although the wheels have been set in motion, I am still not satisfied with my life as it is. And that’s because within me is glory, God’s glory, the glory God has placed in my life and the glory is trying to get out. My dissatisfaction stems from the glory within me telling me that I’m not living the life I was created to live. No wonder I’m not satisfied.

I have realised that for me that living the ’suburban life’ is a sell out, a cop out; it’s an ‘ordinary life’, and I was not created to live an ‘ordinary life’! No-one was created to life an ‘ordinary life’ where all they do is exist. That’s not living. That’s soul killing. It is no wonder people take their own lives, what’s the point in just existing, in living a life where there’s no hope, no reason for living? An ‘ordinary life is no life at all, it’s not really living, it’s just existing, and it almost cost me my heart!

This view, I feel, narrows life in all its glory, down to just a pinpoint, a small, narrow beam of light, when it should be glorious and radiant, lighting the world up. Okay, I want you to picture an empty, dark room. This room represents all of life and all that life could be. But if you go in and look very closely, somwhere in the middle, you will see a tiny dot of light, maybe the size of a match head, no bigger than that. This represents the ‘ordinary life’ the life you live when you’re not really living, when you settle for less. For a life that is glorious, well you turn the light on and you are greeted with the most beautiful, glorious, astonishing room you could ever imagine; bright and luminous, glowing, shining, grand like the inside of a cathedral with spires and stained glass windows, golden filgaree decorations, jewels glinting in the light, music… basically, think of the most beautiful room you can and put into it whatever makes your heart sing. That is what it’s like when your glory comes forth, when you live the life you were created to live and become all you were created to be.

I bought into the ’suburban lifestyle’ and narrowed my life down into something small and prepackaged, something ordinary. We haven’t done all the normal suburban things (thankfully) but we did get sucked into it, sucked into the 9-5 job, the average house in the suburbs, sending your kids to school and not considering that there could be something different, the cars, being a part of an acceptable mainstream church and serving there, being tired, in debt, running around after the kids taking them out to some extra activity three nights a week, watching tv (or ’sucking the glass teat’ as Stephen King described it!) and not following your dreams and the desires of your heart because the world says, your friends say, your boss says, your spouse says, your family says that you’re nuts or it just can’t be done…

And it’s been bringing me down, killing me slowly for years, even before moving to the suburbs. I have been living a life where I’m not really living, not truly alive. I’ve been trapped for a long time and my heart and my soul have been withering slowly, drying up like a pot plant that’s not getting enough water. It’s just that for me, the living in the suburbs, having three small kids and a husband who’s been sick for years with what we know now is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome brought my dissatisfaction with my life to a head.

I am tired of living the life John Eldredge describes in the opening pages of ‘Waking the Dead’. I am tired of just existing! I want to live the life that Jesus promises me “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10) - you know, that abundant life?! And it’s not just about the money either, I want to live the abundant life in all the areas of my life. I don’t want to be rich and still unsatisfied.

Here is the “Not Satisfied” poem that I wrote in response to my dissatisfaction with life.

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