In Brennan Manning’s powerful book, “Abba’s Child”, he recounts Flannery O’Connor’s short story The Turkey about a young boy named Ruller. Ruller feels down about himself because nothing he does amounts to much. One day, while meandering through the woods, Ruller spots a wounded wild turkey and thinks of how proud everyone will be of him if he is able to catch it. Brennan Manning paraphrases the story in the following excerpt:
“Oh, if only I can catch it,” he cries. He will catch it, even if he has to run out of state. He sees himself triumphantly marching through the front door of his house with the turkey slung over his shoulder and the whole family screaming, “Look at Ruller with that wild turkey!”
But then the thought flashes across his mind, “God will probably make me chase that damn turkey all afternoon for nothing.” He knows he shouldn’t think that way about God – yet that’s the way he feels. If that’s the way he feels, can he help it? He wonders if he is unusual.
Ruller finally captures the turkey when it rolls over dead from a previous gunshot wound. He hoists it on his shoulders and begins his messianic march back through the center of town. He remembers the things he had thought before he got the bird. They were pretty bad, he guesses. He figures God stopped him before it was too late. He should be very thankful. “Thank you, God,” he says. “Much obliged to you. This turkey must weigh 10 pounds. You were mighty generous.”
Maybe getting the turkey was a sign, he thinks. Maybe God wants him to be a preacher. He thinks of Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy as he enters town with the turkey slung over his shoulder. He wants to do something for God but he doesn’t know what to do. He continues his journey through town and in his elation he gives a dime to a beggar. His heart begins to feel a new feeling – like being happy and embarrassed at the same time. Maybe, he thinks, he will give all his money to her. He feels as if the ground does not need to be under him any longer.
Ruller notices a group of country boys shuffling behind him. He turns around and asks generously, “Y’all wanna see this turkey? I found it in the woods. I chased it dead. See, it’s been shot under the wing.”
“Lemme see it,” one boy says. Ruller hands him the turkey. The country boy slings the turkey over his own shoulder and turns away. The others turn with him and saunter away.
They are a quarter mile away before Ruller moves. Finally, they are so far away he can’t even see them anymore. Then he creeps towards home. He walks for a bit and then, noticing it is dark, suddenly begins to run. Flannery O’Connor’s exquisite tale ends with these words:
He ran faster and faster, and as he turned up the road to his house, his heart was running as fast as his legs and he was certain that Something Awful was tearing behind him with its arms rigid and its fingers ready to clutch.
In Ruller, my heart stands exposed. When life is good, I rest in God’s love, and contentment is easy to find. I dream of ways to serve God and others. But when disappointment lurks, when my energy is spent from a night on call, when the kids are fighting again, when my stomach churns from the latest digestive ailment, when I look at mother cradling the lifeless body of her child for the second time in two days, God feels far away. I look around at the dark alley and I wonder if I made a wrong turn somewhere. Thoughts of discontent murmur: Have I made a mistake uprooting our family and coming here? I miss my old job. I miss being an ER doctor. Life was good. Life was comfortable. Why, God?
For several months, finding contentment has felt like trying to catch the wind. The breeze rustles but then slips through my fingers. In this pursuit, I have pondered contentment in itself. What is it and how can I find it again? One definition suggests, “Contentment is the feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction.”[1] Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs wrote:
Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, generous frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition. [2]
Two days ago, we returned from a much-needed vacation on a remote island off the coast of Papua New Guinea. We stayed in a rustic sago palm house feet from the ocean. We had no electricity. There were challenges, but at night I listened to the ocean crash in a rhythmic lull as wave after wave washed away my stress. I woke up early in the still-dark morning and bathed in the ocean in a scintillating sliver of moonlight that illuminated the waves. I basked in raw, primal nature. The welkin glimmered with more piercing stars than I have ever seen. I dove through the dark water, swimming in a night ocean all by myself and surrounded by God.
When we arrived back in Kudjip, my heart was optimistic and light. But now I am starting a week with four call shifts. As I sat in chapel before rounds this morning, I felt an anxious weight swell in my chest like an unwelcome guest. It is not hard to be content on a beach in paradise; but what about now?
Two Paths
I told Genae that work here sometimes feels like running out onto a battlefield and trying to pull broken bodies to safety, and then going out to do it again while the bullets whizz around. The week before vacation I had a shift like that in our ER. Every bed filled with critically ill patients. Not enough time to adequately see or care for everyone. Chairs filled up with more people than we had beds for. Charts multiplying like mold. And as fast as I could see people, more were being carried out of trucks and dumped into a sea of need. At one point, I was trying to resuscitate a near-dead two-month-old who was unresponsive in mom’s lap on a chair, and I yelled at our staff, “Get this patient a bed, I don’t care who we have to kick out!”
That night, the chaos continued. I had a cesarean section for twins with placenta previa and the mom had hemorrhaged before arrival. One twin had already died, but we did the C-section to try to save mom and the other twin. After that, I went home and slept for an hour, before getting called back to the ER for a patient with multiple chops from a bush knife. He was chopped down to the skull and I could see his ear canal diving into the bone. As I worked trying to reattach half of his face, another chop patient came in with bloody towels wrapped around his head. It was 3 AM and I was tired and angry. The ER should not be full at 3 AM. In one of my finer missionary moments, I yelled at all the patients in Tok Pisin, “You all need to stop chopping each other and GO TO SLEEP!” It is a good thing I don’t know how to swear in Tok Pisin.
I ask myself, is it possible to find contentment in work like this? Is having a sweet, quiet, gracious inward frame of spirit possible when standing in the midst of multiple patients who have chopped each other up with machetes? The easy answer would be to say, “No”, but I know of missionary doctors who have thrived in this setting – not without scars – for decades. They are admirable people who have exhibited remarkable resilience steeped in the grace of God. It is possible.
When facing discontentment, there are two options: change the outside, or change the inside. The former option is the American one. If you aren’t happy with your work, find a new job. If your marriage isn’t working out, maybe its time for a new spouse. It is easy to blame our discontent on external things: not having enough money, enough vacation, enough appreciation, etc. I am often tempted to the same line of thinking: If only things around me were different, then I could be content. My circumstances are to blame.
The other option for remedying discontent is a narrow and sparsely traveled road. I am reminded of a line from Plato’s Republic, “Vice in abundance is easy to choose, the road is smooth, and it lies very near, while the gods have set sweat before virtue, and it is a long road, rough and steep.”[3] This narrow road of virtue is to seek contentment not by changing the outside, but by changing the inside. It is to focus on character instead of circumstance. This line of thinking is not popular in America. But it is Biblical.
The Apostle Paul had worn out the paths of adversity. Shipwrecked, beaten multiple times to within an inch of death, and a denizen of an unjust prison home, he wrote, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am in to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”[4]
“I have learned in whatever situation I am in to be content.” These words drip with the honey of hard-wrought character. They are not words I can speak. But I will keep toiling up the mountain towards the abode where these words hang, welcoming scarred travelers.
One of my favorite movies is Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of “Little Women”. In one scene, Jo March, a hot-tempered and strong-willed young woman confesses to her mother, Marmee:
“When I get in a passion I get so savage I could hurt anyone and enjoy it.”
Jo’s mother, Marmee, is the epitome of motherhood. She is kind, strong, patient, loving, and supportive. Thus, it is a great surprise in the movie when Marmee hears Jo’s words and affectionately says, “You remind me of myself.”
“But you’re never angry,” Jo objects.
“I’m angry nearly every day of my life.”
“You are?”
“I’m not patient by nature. But with nearly 40 years of effort, I’m learning not to let it get the better of me.”
Changing character is a lot more difficult than changing circumstance. Recently, I have been reading a book called, “Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges.” It defines resilience as, “The ability to weather and recover from adversity.” Resilience is certainly a boon of a friend in a medical missions context. The authors, from a secular and medical perspective, discuss 10 strategies for developing resilience. The first of these is to develop “realistic optimism.” Realistic optimism is not sunny ignorance that is naïve to the brokenness of life. Rather, it is the ability to look misery and possible disappointment squarely in the eye and choose an attitude of hope.
The authors give much helpful advice on fostering realistic optimism, but one line stood out to me:
If we repeatedly focus our attention on the negative, think negative thoughts, interpret events negatively, constantly complain, worry, and act as if we are miserable, we will tend to see the world as a dark and threatening place. But if we pay attention to both the positive and the negative, ignore irrelevant negative information, let go of the negative that we cannot change, interpret information in a more positive light, and take action to solve problems that are solvable, then we will tend to see the world as exciting, challenging, and hopeful.
“Resilience” – Southwick et al.
In Jack Gilbert’s cutting poem, “A Brief for the Defense” he writes, “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”
Ouch.
Genae is an optimist and I am a realist (which is an optimistic way of saying pessimist). We are a great fit for each other. My natural disposition is to yearn to make things better. But part of striving for improvement is having a keen eye for imperfection, and a propensity towards pessimism. Noticing negativity has taken a toll on my soul. The fodder for pessimism is abundant here: there is so much death, endless violence, and seemingly insurmountable need without enough resources to meet that need.
I have set my sights on fostering “realistic optimism.” I had a list on my phone of all the kids who have died since I started working here. I deleted that list today. I lament those losses and give them to God; I don’t need to carry them anymore. I have an album on my phone that I called, “Rejoicing”, and it is full of pictures of people we have helped save. It is a better magnet for my attention.
It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Unknown
I need to stop cursing the darkness, and find the light each day. The pain and difficulty of a missions hospital is a furnace for character development and trust in God.
That leads me to one final question: “Should Christians be realistic optimists?”
This week, I have meditated on the words of Habbakuk 3:17-19:
Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no heard in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.
Life can fall apart at the seams. Even for Christians. Adversity can mount up beyond our worse nightmares. Yet, we can rejoice in the Lord, the God of our salvation. The worst evils of life are burnt away by the fire of Christ’s glory. The sun of God’s blazing redemption rises out of the darkest night. Grieve, lament, but take joy. Hope wins.
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
My endeavor in the coming months is keep climbing the hill of contentment, even in the battlefield of the hospital, by focusing on realistic optimism and the all-sufficient presence of Christ. While there is a vital place for considering external factors like rest, sabbath, and margin, I need to develop, by the grace of God, the internal resiliency to be content wherever God places me.
My Lord, how full of sweet content;
I pass my years of banishment!
Where’er I dwell, I dwell with Thee,
In Heaven, in earth, or on the sea.
To me remains nor place nor time;
My country is in every clime;
I can be calm and free from care
On any shore, since God is there.
While place we seek or place we shun
Madame Guyon, 1722
The soul finds happiness in none;
But with a God to guide our way,
‘Tis equal joy, to go or stay.
Could I be cast where Thou are not,
That were indeed a dreadful lot:
But regions none remote I call,
Secure of finding God in all.
Reflection:
- When have you struggled to find contentment?
- When reckoning with discontentment, what is your primary strategy: changing the outside or changing the inside?
- What things apart from Christ do you seek ultimate contentment in? Is it working out? “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, O God…”
- What virtue development is God calling you to?
As always, we are so grateful for your prayers, comments, and partnership! We couldn’t do this work without all the amazing people who have loved and supported us on the journey. Thank you!
[1] “Collin’s Dictionary.”
[2] “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.” Jeremiah Burroughs.
[3] “The Republic”. Plato.
[4] Philippians 4:11-13.
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