contentment Archives - Gina Brenna Butz

Faith for the Small Life

Post author:Gina B
Post published:June 8, 2017
Post category:faith

I’ve always been small, the runt of the litter. In all my pictures growing up, I’m the shortest one. People regularly assumed I was a few years younger than I was. In response, I became what you might call “scrappy.” Trying to appear bigger, stronger, more capable than I was.

I still do.

Our kids finished school a couple weeks ago, and, in true Gina form, I made a summer schedule for myself that belies the fact that they still live in our home and require some level of interaction. By the end of the first week, I was disappointed. So much of my time was spent not on the grand plans I had, but on the seemingly mundane tasks of laundry, driving, cooking, and cleaning.

I wanted more to show for my time. Many of us do. We want a broader influence, greater opportunities, upward mobility. Significance is the goal. Ordinary feels mediocre. The world calls us to accomplish visible, important tasks, not the day-to-day.

In contrast, the question was posed once at a conference I attended, “Do you have enough faith to live a small life?”

Do we have faith that God is just as much at work, just as glorified, just as powerful, in the small things? In us doing the ordinary? Doing less? Do we have faith that we would still be just as important?

Confession: most times, no. I do not have that kind of faith. I suspect many of us don’t.

A small life might ask more faith of me than a grand one.

I want that kind of faith.

In the eyes of the world, most of what I do is not spectacular, nor does it need to be.

So I should embrace my smallness.

I want to live every little moment fully, seeing God in every detail, experiencing His power in my weakness and my limits.

Give me faith, God, to believe that it is enough that You see what I do in secret, that You are honored by my willing sacrifice in the day-to-day.

Make me faithful with little, not that I would then gain much, but simply because it pleases Your heart.

May I be small so that others can be bigger, believing that them having more space does not diminish my worth.

I want to occupy only as much space in this world as God would have me occupy, no more, no less.

We might be small in the eyes of the world, but in those ordinary moments we can live lives that glorify Him when we do it willingly, joyfully, and with faith that it is enough.

“He must become greater, I must become less.” John 3:30

How to Swimsuit Shop without Shame

Post author:Gina B
Post published:July 18, 2016
Post category:grace gratitude identity truth

Last week I took a trip to hell, also known as swimsuit shopping. Not only do you have to see what your half-naked body looks like wrapped in variously fitting and oftentimes unflattering spandex, but you get to do it in a room designed by a sadist. Who thought fluorescent lighting in dressing rooms was a good idea?

But I was determined to not let it ruin me.

First of all, I felt I would greatly benefit from having this girl with me:

And then I thought maybe I should just BE this girl.

I decided that whatever thoughts came to mind about what I was seeing in the mirror, I would focus on what I love. Then again, love can sometimes feel like a stretch. But grateful? I can definitely be grateful for what I have.

Why I’m Grateful as I Swimsuit Shop

Gratitude reminds me that I can stand up and shop on my own, without help.

I live in a place where women are free to wear what they want. That’s a privilege many live without.

This body has housed my soul, been its barometer reminding me when I need to eat, sleep, breathe, for over 40 years. It tells me when we’re not doing well, which is kind. I want to be kind in return.

I am thankful even for my stretch marks because they mean I have been blessed to carry two babies.

The shape of my body means I have never gone hungry, when so many do.

How grateful I am for a husband who praises my body when I know there are women who are demeaned because of theirs.

I am thankful that I have the opportunity to rest and refresh myself, giving rise to the need for this suit.

Thank God I have money to buy a suit since I pulled a Gina and forgot to bring any of the three I already own (and thank God for 60% off sales).

And on and on.

Gratitude can surround our hearts like a shield, protecting us from that which would tear us down.

As we gather the pieces of what we can celebrate, our eyes are turned off what we lack and onto how we are blessed.

I survived my swimsuit shopping. Actually, I more than survived. Gratitude kept my head above the water, like a lifesaver made from grace. It keeps us afloat in the deepest waters.

Thankful

Post author:Gina B
Post published:November 27, 2014
Post category:gratitude

Thankful

As I stand in my kitchen this morning, preparing for Thanksgiving, I can’t help realizing that our time overseas has given me a new and deeper appreciation for certain things I didn’t have before.

I made a creme de menthe pie yesterday. Long story short, I had to make it twice.

All it required to remake it was a quick trip to the store for two inexpensive items. Overseas, I had to make the pie shell, make the marshmallow cream myself (with precious imported gelatin), make the whipping cream (purchased at great cost at the western grocery store 30 minutes away) and spend a few minutes convincing a person at Starbucks to give me three shots of mint flavoring.

I don’t take for granted that we can buy all the ingredients we need to make whatever people requested (in this house, in addition to the pie, it was green bean casserole and sweet potatoes with marshmallows). Not only are they available, but we can afford to buy them. In short, life is easier and cheaper here.

Not only that, we have a giant oven in which to cook food, and our microwave doubles as a conventional oven so I can cook them all at the same time. Our oven overseas was “big” because it wasn’t just a toaster oven. It wasn’t until our last three years there that we owned a refrigerator that was anything more than a glorified dorm fridge. That was ok though – chances were there was somewhere in your house cold enough to thaw a turkey. The problem was storing any leftovers.

And while we’re disappointed not to be spending the holidays with family, we have come to know the joy of celebrating with friends who feel like family. They, too, know what it’s like to not have this abundance. Today, we’ll be grateful together for all we have here.

As challenging as some of those experiences were overseas, I’m grateful for them too. They reminded us that the best gifts are not tangible. So maybe we didn’t have a turkey or the other traditional foods we knew. We have so much that cannot be taken from us – salvation, joy, eternal life, love. All these other gifts are above and beyond. My heart is thankful.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had these thoughts back on this side of the ocean. Here are a few other reflections:

Absence Makes the Heart Grateful

A Year of Thanks

You There Yet? Thoughts on Transition

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 25, 2014
Post category:transition

My due date with our first child was February 19th, 2000. Once that day passed, I had the vague feeling I had missed my chance and was therefore doomed to be pregnant forever. One of our teammates called from a trip in Thailand and asked me, “You have that baby yet?” I informed him that it was good thing he was in another country or I would have slapped him. Silly single guy. Never ask a pregnant woman that.

People sometimes ask me if we feel like we are through transitioning. If we’re “settled.” No worries – I don’t feel like slapping them when they ask, but I do feel like I wish there were a clearer due date, a definite answer. Sometimes it has felt like we’ll be in transition forever.

If transition is a mountain that we are trying to climb, then to be “through” transition should mean we’ll reach the top and start heading down the other side, right? And I would know if we’d done that. We haven’t.

The problem with mountains, though, is that there is no clear top. There’s no due date, no timeline. Instead, the top of a mountain is often flat, wide open spaces, with occasional ups and downs. You’re so close, but you’re still climbing.

That’s where I feel like we are, and may be for a while (thank God pregnancy’s not like that). It isn’t the arduous climb that it was, but all that took a lot out of us so all in all I’m a little tired of climbing. For the most part, we’re used to life here. Still, there are moments when I realize I operate from different values, different ways of doing things, different expectations. I still have moments when I ache for what we left behind. I’m not ready to fully embrace some aspects of life here.

But maybe the goal isn’t to be “done.” It’s to let all that we go through in life draw us closer to Him. It’s to enjoy whatever view we currently have, and I have to say, it’s a pretty good one these days. Transition is a big mountain, but it’s not the only mountain we’ve ever climbed or will climb. We just have to keep on going, trusting along the way. The journey goes on.

Word of the Year Review

Post author:Gina B
Post published:December 27, 2013
Post category:word of the year

Well, it’s been almost a year that I’ve been focusing on this one word, Content. This should be the time when I tell you all how incredibly content I’ve become and then we all rejoice together.

Um, how about instead I just tell you what I’ve learned?

Naturally when you try to do something, you first get to discover how much you are not that something. I began the year by learning to recognize what makes me discontent. Mainly it stems from comparison – comparing my life to someone else’s, to where I thought I’d be or what I thought I’d have at this point, comparing it to some ideal I’ve constructed in my head that may or may not be realistic (95% of the time it is not). In the process, I realized that being discontent gets me nowhere.

I also learned that being content has a lot to do with being clear on what I am called to do, be, and have. God has created me for specific purposes. He has made me who I am, which includes my strengths and weaknesses and gifts and current situation. They are not the same as the next person’s; that would be boring and pointless. When I have clarity on who I am and what He wants for me, I can rest in living within those boundaries.

Being content has a lot to do with remembering that I am a child, with keeping the posture of a child who believes that her Father knows best. It may not always be what I think I want, but I will trust and obey because it is for my good.

I think I have been learning too that contentment is different than resignation. Resignation is giving up, losing hope, killing desire. Contentment keeps desire alive but believes that if it isn’t being satisfied right now, there’s a reason.

So am I content? I would say I am more content, and that I have learned that I have a greater capacity to choose contentment than I realized, especially when I am aware of the state of my heart. I’m thankful for all God put in my life this year to teach me these things.

What about you? Did you see growth in your one word? (this is not a rhetorical question – I really do want to know!)

Don’t blame location

Post author:Gina B
Post published:July 11, 2013
Post category:transition

When Erik first told me we were moving to Singapore in 2004, I had to look it up on a map. I had an idea that it was near Fiji.

It is not near Fiji.

I quickly learned more about our new tropical island home than its location, just short of the equator and connected by bridges to Malaysia. I learned that it was the cleanest, safest, most efficient, most affluent, and most beautiful place I’ve ever been. What’s not to love about Singapore?

And yet, through our time there, I met plenty of women who hated Singapore. Couldn’t find a thing to like about it. Really? How is that possible? It’s a tropical island for Pete’s sake. You live where people dream of vacationing.

Don’t Blame Location

It wasn’t Singapore they hated. It was their circumstances. Singapore just happened to be the unlucky backdrop. These women generally were expat women in transition. Uprooted from all they loved, their homes, their families, they were dropped into a lifestyle quite unlike what they’d ever known.

They were lost, lonely, bored. They probably would have been lost, lonely, and bored in whatever country God dropped them, but they happened to be in Singapore and so it was at fault.

I learned two things from those women – first, that every place has its ups and downs, and you have to make a choice to focus on the ups.

Second, and more importantly (because truthfully, some places do have fewer ups) I have to separate how I’m doing internally from where I am or I will miss growth.

Learning Not to Blame This Location

People asked me early on how we liked living in Orlando. I had to remind myself to stop and take away the lens of transition that colored our first six months there. Though Orlando was the context for some tough moments, it was not the cause of them. When I did that, I could say that yes, we really did enjoy living there.

Blaming location misses the real issues. It’s easy to say “I just don’t like this place. Life would be better somewhere else” rather than to acknowledge and deal with what our circumstances are doing to our hearts. The great news is that sometimes we can’t change location, but we can always change how we look at them.

Expectation Management

Post author:Gina B
Post published:June 26, 2013
Post category:expectations transition

One of the best coping skills Erik and I learned in the early days of expat living was a simple phrase, “lower your standards!” When you read that, you have to imagine it with your best game show host voice, like you’re inviting someone to an exciting opportunity behind door #1.

It was all about expectations. If you expect that the bathroom you’ve been led to out the back door of a restaurant and down a dark alley will be a picture of cleanliness, you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you imagine that it will be a sufficient hole in the ground, you’ll be satisfied. You get the idea.

It’s called expectation management. The problem with expectations is that we are so often unaware of them. It doesn’t occur to me that I would appreciate a toilet that flushes until I look up and see that the wall mounted reservoir in the back alley bathroom is partially missing and the frozen water within is still holding its shape. I can flush in springtime.

I’ve been reminded lately how important it is to talk about our expectations.This is especially true with our kids. When we began summer vacation this year, they had an unspoken expectation that it would be like their three previous summers, when they spent all day, every day, outside with friends. Last summer I even had to call one mom and ask her if her kids could maybe not schedule the summer project involving my children quite as often because they weren’t able to spend time with other kids. We were beating off the playdates with sticks.

This wasn’t the case in Orlando. The kids they’ve met from school mostly live about an hour away, and others were preparing for long trips away. Within a few days we were all scratching hash marks on the walls. I finally realized we needed to have a talk about expectations with them, and we basically had to say, “lower your standards.” It required a little more mourning of what they used to have, but within a day their “I’m bored” statements had reduced significantly. It’s a process of looking at reality and making adjustments.

So often when I am frustrated with life it is because I expected it to be a certain way and it isn’t. Many of my expectations are residual, left over from what I was accustomed to having in my “previous” life. It’s helpful for me to take a hard look at the expectations I have and ask myself if they are realistic in this new season of life. Some of them might not be, and that’s where I need to tell myself to “lower my standards.” It doesn’t mean I’m giving up hope. It means I’m choosing contentment.

Live for That Day

Post author:Gina B
Post published:May 15, 2013
Post category:faith word of the year

In my continuing 2013 quest for contentment, one thought seems to be becoming central, and it is this, “This is all temporal.”

I think it when I see commercials where women talk about wanting to always be bikini ready, or try to sell me age defying make up, or the perfect lawn which everyone needs, or, and I still can’t even believe I saw this, Tuscan style flavored dog food.

It would be so easy to see these things and think, “Yes, I need these too!” (except the Tuscan style dog food. I’m sorry, there’s just no way) and then begin to shape my life around obtaining these things. I know the inevitable stress that follows, not only from the futility of obtaining what they’re telling me I need, but also from the way that those pursuits crowd out other, probably more important, things.

But when I look at them and think, “This world, this life, is a blip on a line. It’s temporal. It’s fleeting. And in the end it SO won’t matter if I had a beach ready body or looked 30 when I was 50, or if my lawn looked good. My dog certainly doesn’t give a rip what she eats.”

And when I start to dwell on that, I find contentment creeping in. I find I can look at something and think, “Yeah, that would be nice. But it’s really ok if I don’t get there, because in the grand scheme of things, it falls in the ‘less than important’ category.”

So I’m trying to keep that thought in my mind. As our pastor said on Sunday, in his sermon about idols, “Don’t live for this day, live for that day.”

I Quit Pinterest

Post author:Gina B
Post published:April 8, 2013
Post category:grace

I quit Pinterest.

Seriously, I did.

I realized that after looking at Pinterest, I would have this vaguely uneasy, discontented feeling, like maybe my health, my house, my relationships, and certainly my parties, were all a little lacking. Sub-par. Less than awesome.

True, I’ve found some great recipes there. I’m currently looking at what is a highly satisfying DIY project of ceiling medallions adorning my dining room wall, thanks to a pin I saw (but FYI ceiling medallions are NOT inexpensive unless you can magically find them at a salvage yard or something). I have new ideas for exercising. I have been amused by some e-cards.

But what I’ve found, and I’m finding all over the internet actually, is that we all seem to be striving for just a little bit more, just a little bit better. And we don’t just strive for it, we have to put it out there that we’re striving for it. And sadly I think that generally produces one of two results, at least it does in me: either a zealous attempt to keep up with the Jones who appear to produce fabulous non-processed organic meals for their continually-improving-through-homemade-activity-children and going on meaningful dates with their spouses while maintaining rock hard abs, all in their chemically free, Pottery Barn inspired yet DIY decorated homes, OR, it makes us want to throw in the towel.

Me – I’m doing the latter. It’s not that I don’t want some of those things. I just want them not that much. Not so much that I make them my god. My idols. That’s what I find happening in my heart when I sit and stare at page after page of what I could do, what I could be, what I could have. I am sure there are people out there for whom Pinterest is nothing more than a fun way to gather ideas and grow, and that’s great. For me, I have to go back to my word of the year – content – and own that Pinterest is one of those things that stands in contradiction with it.

How do we live content?

Post author:Gina B
Post published:February 24, 2013
Post category:word of the year

In 2013, I chose the word, “Content” as my word of the year.

A friend advised me in choosing a word to choose what I thought I needed. In that case, “chocolate” felt like a good word. It felt like it would carry me through a lot.

But I was in the throes of transition, and my needs were great. Greater than chocolate. God’s invitation was, “What if, by the end of the year, those needs aren’t met? Will you still be content?” So content it was.

Nearly two months into the year, I wondered if “chocolate” was a better word. I would have done it well. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t, though, because then my word for the year in 2014 would have been “detox” which doesn’t look very pretty embroidered on a pillow.

No, my word was “content.” By definition, it means, “in a state of peaceful happiness; satisfied with a certain level of achievement, good fortune, etc. and not wishing for more; to accept as adequate despite wanting more or better.”

Many words jump to mind as synonyms for “content” after reading this definition: satisfied, accepting, peaceful, patience, submission, enough.

It’s a lack of striving, of trying to make life a certain way. Receiving with gratitude and a quiet heart. Freedom from being in control. Taking a deep breath and saying, “This is ok.”

In other words, the antithesis of my mode of operation. Maybe yours too.

Most of the first two months of 2013 revealed where I was NOT content and why (“the first step is admitting you have a problem”). I saw discontentment in who I was, what I had, and what I did.

And so began a choice: where will I focus my attention?

I chose not to watch the red carpet for the Oscars because it bred discontentment with my body and my lack of fame.

My Pinterest time dwindled because after I looked there, I felt unsettled and uneasy about the lack of awesome DIY projects that could make my house look like a magazine ad.

Facebook and Instagram I took in smaller doses.

I learned to ask questions like, “When you look at your own body, will you choose to be content? Will you say yes to what God has given you?”

or, “When you look at the mess of things undone, can you smile and say, ‘It’s ok’?”

and maybe hardest of all, “Will you be content to let God choose His own way of working your life and not demand your own ways?”

So am I more content now? I don’t know about that. I would say I’m more and more convinced that it is the key for me to live well here right now.

A small life might ask more faith of me than a grand one.

Why I’m Grateful as I Swimsuit Shop

Related posts:

Don’t Blame Location

Learning Not to Blame This Location