Are You Discerning A Life You Don’t Have?

What if someone else has everything you want?

Two Women at a Window by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Have you ever found yourself surrounded by people who all seem to have what you want?

I’m not talking about things that money could buy, if we only had enough of it - new clothes or a car or even a house - rather, those things that can’t ever be purchased: a great spouse, a happy marriage, children, good friendship, health… things that we often have really deep desires for.

It’s a hard place to be, and it can really affect our discernment.

Because sometimes our (often good!) desires for these wonderful things can make us discern lives we don’t actually have. We want these things so much that we spend most of our time imagining what it would be like to have them and hoping and planning to have them… all our energy goes towards the things we don’t have, but wish we did.

The struggle is real, and I know very few people (even people with great marriages and beautiful children and good health) who don’t sometimes imagine what life would be like, if only…

Fr. Jacques Philippe describes the interior disposition of someone in this situation so well - his words really struck me:

“I have the feeling, according to Rimabaud’s expression, that ‘the real life is elsewhere,’ elsewhere than the life that is mine. And that the latter is not real life, that it doesn’t offer me the conditions for spiritual growth because of certain sufferances or limitations. I am concentrated on the negatives of my situation, on that which I lack in order to be happy. This renders me unhappy, envious and discouraged and I am unable to go forward. The real life is elsewhere, I tell myself, and so I simply forget to live.”

Real life is elsewhere and so I simply forget to live.

Isn’t that the truth? We’re so focused on something else that doesn’t exist, that in our minds, we’ve made it exist. We’ve convinced ourselves that the lives we currently have - right now, in this moment - aren’t real.

Yikes.

So what’s to be done?

“Oftentimes it would take so little for everything to be different and for me to progress with giant steps: a different outlook, a view of my situation which is one of confidence and hope (based on the certitude that I will lack nothing). And then the doors would open to me of unhoped-for possibilities for spiritual growth. We often live with this illusion. With the impression that all would go better, we would like the things around us to change, that the circumstances would change. But this is often an error. It is not the exterior circumstances that must change: it is above all our hearts that must change.”

Did you catch that?

For everything to be different, we don’t need to change everything: just our hearts.

And in changing our hearts, what will happen is not that we will suddenly get all those things we’re really longing for, but rather, we can grow closer to the Lord.

“Let us then be convinced of this and it will be for us a source of immense strength: God may allow me to occasionally lack money, health, abilities, and virtues, but He will never leave me in want of Himself, of His assistance and His mercy or of anything that would allow me to grow unceasingly ever closer to Him.”

The lack of the things we want most deeply is an opportunity to grow in intimacy with God. Because all those good things we want? Really, they’re things meant to point us towards Heaven.

Yes, we can and should ask God for all the good things we desire. But even if prayer doesn’t change those things, it changes us.

Prayer helps us to re-focus on reality, if we let it.

Prayers of adoration re-centre us on a generous Creator who didn’t need to make us, but did anyway, out of love.

Prayers of thanksgiving remind us of the many, many gifts we do have, despite our unfulfilled longings.

Prayers of lament allow us to be honest about our grief, limitations, and struggles.

If you find yourself discerning a life you don’t have, because you don’t like the one you do have, it’s time to get honest about reality. Start praying honestly. Start focusing on what you do have, and allow yourself to grieve what you don’t. Start getting clear on what is in your power to change, and what isn’t.

Perhaps the ‘serenity prayer’ is a good place to start:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

And if you aren’t sure how to start discerning these things, do reach out!