Part 7 of 8 — The Year God Redefined Contentment Series

If you’re just joining me, I encourage you to begin with the previous posts in this series, as each one builds upon the last.

Part 1, When God Gives You a Word You Don’t Want
Part 2 The Orphan Lie
Part 3 The Illusion of Control
Part 4 The Mercy that Changed me
Part 5 Known and Loved
Part 6 The Deepest Question of My Heart

Each revelation seemed to uncover another layer beneath it. What began as a journey toward contentment had become something far more personal: an invitation to know the heart of the Father.

Yet before I understood any of this as clearly as I do today, God had already given me a picture of what He was doing.

At the time, I knew it mattered.

I just didn’t yet understand how much.

A Picture I Didn’t Yet Understand

Hello Friend!

I was sitting on an airplane flying home, spending time with Jesus during my daily devotional, when an image suddenly formed in my mind. I saw a multi-colored quilt made up of many different pieces, and woven throughout the entire quilt was a single red thread. It wasn’t an elaborate vision, but there was something about that picture that immediately settled into my spirit with a significance I couldn’t fully explain.

I knew the quilt represented my life; every piece belonging to a different chapter of my story. Some pieces were beautiful. Others represented seasons I never would have chosen for myself. Together, they formed something I could not yet see in its entirety. But what captured my attention wasn’t really the quilt itself.

It was the thread running through every piece.

The red thread was God’s love.

Along with that picture came another knowing in my spirit: the book I sensed God calling me to write was somehow connected to this image; to the story of His love being interwoven through every piece of my life. I didn’t receive an outline that day. I didn’t suddenly understand what every square represented or know exactly what I was supposed to do with what He had shown me. I simply tucked the vision away in my heart, laid what it might become before the Lord, and trusted that if He wanted me to understand more, He would reveal it in His timing.

What I find so beautiful now is that when God gave me that picture, I hadn’t yet walked through many of the revelations I’ve shared throughout this series. I hadn’t yet read Known & Loved by Glenna Marshall nor encountered Psalm 139 in the deeply personal way that would transform my understanding of the Father’s heart. I hadn’t yet recognized how much fear had shaped my need for control, experienced mercy as the invitation to transformation, nor discovered that the deepest question beneath so many of my patterns was simply, Am I safe?

I knew God loved me. I have known that truth my entire life, and I have experienced His faithfulness through some of the hardest seasons I have ever walked through. I have never doubted that He is with me. Yet I can see now that while I understood what the red thread in my vision represented, I did not yet comprehend the depth of what He was showing me.

I knew the red thread represented His love.
I just didn’t know yet how deeply I was loved.

That understanding would come slowly through deeper intimacy with Jesus and through allowing Him to show me not only who He is, but also the places where my understanding of His heart had been distorted. The more He revealed, the more I began to see that the thread wasn’t simply evidence that God had been present throughout my story. It was evidence of a love that had pursued me, sustained me, corrected me, carried me, protected me, comforted me, and remained faithful to me through every version of myself I had ever been.

Psalm 23:6 (ESV) says, “Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD as long as I live.”

That word—pursue—means something beautiful to me now. God’s love wasn’t sitting somewhere at the end of my story, waiting for me to become spiritually mature enough to finally reach it. His faithful love had been pursuing me all along. Through the beautiful pieces and the broken ones, through obedience and wandering, through seasons when I clung tightly to Him and seasons when I relied far too heavily on myself, the thread remained.

It had been there every stitch of the way.

When I Could Only See the Pieces

For much of my life, when I looked back, it was easy to identify certain chapters by what happened within them. Some pieces of my story carried grief. Others held rejection, betrayal, unanswered prayers, disappointment, failure, illness, broken relationships, or consequences from choices—mine or someone else’s—that left wounds I never anticipated carrying. There were beautiful pieces too, of course, filled with love, redemption, laughter, provision, relationship, and unmistakable evidence of God’s goodness. But like most of us, the painful pieces often demanded more of my attention.

I never believed those painful seasons meant God had stopped loving me. Even in my darkest moments, there was something deep within me that knew He was there. I believed that if He allowed me to walk through something difficult, He would also give me the strength and grace I needed to walk through it. What I didn’t recognize, however, was how much my understanding of His love had been filtered through my understanding of an earthly father’s love.

My dad loved me deeply, and I never questioned that. But he could also be harsh, and without realizing it, I carried some of that tone into the way I interpreted my Heavenly Father. I believed God loved me, but sometimes I imagined His love sounding sterner than it actually was. When life hurt, when I failed, or when something in me needed correction, I could easily perceive Him through a lens that expected harshness or disappointment rather than tenderness.

What God has been changing in me isn’t the truth that He loves me.

He has been changing the way I hear the tone of His love.

I can now look at seasons that once felt marked primarily by abandonment, rejection, punishment, unanswered prayer, or failure and recognize something I couldn’t fully see while standing inside them. The Father wasn’t coldly watching my pain from a distance. He hurt with me. Every tear I cried in grief, defeat, disappointment, or heartbreak mattered to Him. His Word says he bottles our tears. (Psalm 56:8) When I didn’t think I could take another step, He carried me. When darkness felt overwhelming, He comforted me. When circumstances threatened to unravel everything I knew, His presence remained steady beneath me.

The pieces didn’t suddenly become less painful because I could see His love within them. Loss was still loss. Betrayal still wounded. Grief still hurt. Unanswered prayers still left questions I sometimes wished had different answers.

Recognizing the thread of love
does not require me to call something good
that God never called good.

It simply allows me to recognize
that pain never has the final word
over any piece of my story.

LOVE did.

God Did Not Stitch Every Wound Into My Story

There is an important distinction I want to make here because when we talk about God weaving something beautiful through our stories, it can be tempting to look at every painful thing that has happened and assume He has intentionally placed it there. That isn’t what this quilt represents to me.

We live in a world fractured by the Fall. Our stories contain the consequences of sin, the choices of other people, our own choices made both with and without surrender to Christ, loss, disease, death, disappointment, and brokenness that was never part of God’s original design for humanity. Some pieces reflect beautiful obedience and redemption. Others bear the evidence of what happens when human brokenness collides with human brokenness. God’s sovereignty does not require me to call evil good nor to pretend every wound was something He personally authored.

At the same time, nothing touches our lives outside God’s sovereignty, and nothing we endure places us beyond His presence, His sustaining grace, or His ability to redeem.

That distinction has become incredibly important to the way I understand the quilt. God did not need to wound me in order to prove He could heal me. He did not need betrayal in order to prove He could remain faithful, nor did He need grief in order to prove He could comfort me. But when those things entered my story, His love entered those places with me.

God did not author every painful piece of my story.
But through every one, the thread of His love
remained unbroken.

That is the red thread.

His love entered the grief.

His love entered the rejection.

His love entered the consequences.

His love answered the unanswered questions.

His love entered the places where other people hurt me—and the places where my own choices hurt others.

He didn’t stand outside those pieces waiting for me to make them beautiful before He would come near. He met me within them. He sustained me when I thought I had nothing left. He prevented my life from completely unraveling when everything around me seemed to be coming apart. He redeemed things I believed were beyond redemption, pursued me when I wandered, carried me when I couldn’t carry myself, and placed people in my life whose faithful love became tangible reminders of His own love.

I used to think the greatest testimony of my life was everything I had survived. I could point to the losses, betrayals, grief, broken relationships, health struggles, and seasons that required more grit than I knew I possessed and say, "Look what God brought me through."

That is certainly part of my testimony.

But it is no longer the greatest part.

God has shown me that the greater testimony was how faithfully I had been loved through all of it.

The defining story of my life is not pain.

It is not loss.

It isn't even resilience.

It is love.

And the deeper my relationship with Jesus becomes, the more clearly I can see that thread woven through even the hardest chapters of my story. What I once saw primarily through the lens of pain, I can now look back on and recognize the faithful love that carried me through it all.

I Found His Love in Unexpected Places

If you had asked me years ago where I had experienced God’s love most profoundly, I probably would have pointed to the moments when He carried me through suffering. I would have told you about His comfort in grief, His provision when circumstances felt impossible, His strength when mine had disappeared, and the unmistakable ways He held me together when life threatened to pull me apart.

Those things remain precious evidence of His love.

However, over the past two years, I have begun experiencing the depth of His love in a place I never expected.

His correction.

As I’ve drawn closer to Jesus, He has lovingly revealed areas of my heart and life that were crooked and needing to be made straight. He exposed fear disguised as wisdom, control hiding as protection, reactions that didn’t reflect His heart, places of pride and self-reliance, and areas I had not yet fully surrendered to Him. In many ways, I am more aware of my own brokenness and desperate need for Jesus today than I have ever been before.

And somehow, I have never felt more loved.

That still amazes me.

I once assumed that seeing my flaws more clearly would make me feel farther from God. Instead, His kindness in revealing my weaknesses has drawn me closer. He has never shown me something that needed to change and then withdrawn from me in disappointment. He has never exposed an un-surrendered place simply to shame me for not surrendering it sooner. He has lovingly brought truth into those places and invited me to trust Him enough to let Him transform them.

His mercy has changed the tone of correction for me.

What once might have sounded like, How could you still be struggling with this? now sounds more like the loving invitation of a Father saying, Daughter, let Me show you another place where I want to set you free.

That is love.

In fact, I think it may be one of the deepest expressions of love I have ever experienced.

I expected to understand God’s love most clearly by remembering how He comforted me in my suffering. Instead, some of the deepest revelations of His love have come through discovering how gently He corrects me in my sanctification.

He loves me enough not to leave me unchanged.

He loves me enough to reveal what is crooked.

He loves me enough to call me into holiness and obedience.

And He loves me enough to remain close while He does the work.

Faithful Love Pursued Me All My Days

When I return to Psalm 23:6 now, the word pursue feels almost overwhelming in its beauty: “Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life.”

All the days.

Not only my obedient days.

Not only the days when I sought Him first, made wise choices, responded correctly, or lived completely surrendered.

All my days.

Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you.” (CSB)

Everlasting love does not begin when we finally understand it.

It was there before we recognized it.

God remained faithful to me even in seasons when my own faithfulness to Him was inconsistent. He pursued me when I wandered. He patiently waited while I learned lessons I probably could have learned sooner, had I not rebelled. He continued revealing Himself when my understanding of His heart was incomplete. He brought people into my life whose patience, forgiveness, faithfulness, and love gave me glimpses of what His heart toward me had always been.

Tyler has been one of those gifts. Through the faithful love, patience, compassion, and forgiveness I have experienced in our marriage, God has given me a tangible picture of something infinitely greater. Human love will always be imperfect, but there have been countless moments when the love I have received through my husband has caused me to stop and think, If this is what faithful human love can look like, how much greater is the love of my Heavenly Father?

The thread has taken many forms throughout my story.

Sometimes it looked like supernatural strength when I had none left.

Sometimes it looked like comfort in grief.

Sometimes it looked like protection I didn’t recognize until later.

Sometimes it looked like mercy when consequences could have been greater.

Sometimes it looked like a person God placed in my life.

Sometimes it looked like conviction that brought me to repentance.

And sometimes it looked like Jesus quietly reminding me that even when I had misunderstood His heart, His heart toward me had never changed.

The thread was never dependent upon my ability to hold onto Him perfectly.

His faithful love was holding onto me.

The Thread Holding My Story Together Was Never My Strength

For much of my life, strength became part of how I understood myself. I had endured hard things, and when life demanded resilience, I found a way to keep moving. There were seasons when grit was necessary, when people depended on me, and when getting through the next day required more strength than I thought I had.

But God has been gently rewriting that part of my story too.

The truth is, I was never the one holding all the pieces together.

He was.

My strength may have helped me survive individual seasons, but it was never the thread connecting the whole story. My grit could only carry me so far. My ability to push through had limits. Eventually, every version of strength I could manufacture reached its end.

His love never did.

The thread holding my story together was never my strength.
It was His love.

That realization changes the way I tell my testimony.

My story is no longer simply, Look what I survived.

It has become:

Look how faithfully He loved me.

Look how He pursued me, carried me, redeemed what was broken.

Look how He refused to abandon the places I wanted to hide.

Look how He lovingly corrected what needed to change.

Look how He remained faithful when I was still learning how to surrender.

Look how His love was woven through every chapter—even the ones where I couldn’t yet see the thread.

The greatest story of my life is how God has taken pain He never called good and, through His redemptive love, used it for His purpose: to heal what was broken within me, draw me deeper into relationship with Him, transform me into greater Christlikeness, and allow my story to point others back to Jesus.

That is love.

What the Thread of Love Taught Me About Contentment

When God first gave me the word contentment, I thought He was going to teach me how to become satisfied with what I had. Seven parts into this series, I can see how incomplete that understanding was.

Contentment has become less about accepting my circumstances and more about knowing the character of the One who is with me inside them.

The quilt helped me understand why.

When I look back now, I can see evidence of His faithful love woven throughout chapters I never would have chosen. I can see that He never left my side at my worst. He remained patient while I learned. Kind while He corrected. Merciful when I failed. Faithful when I wandered. Present when I grieved. Strong when I was weak.

And if that is who He has always been, why would I believe He will become someone different in the chapters I haven’t lived yet?

I don’t know what every future piece of my quilt will look like. There will undoubtedly be beautiful pieces I cannot yet imagine, and because we still live in a broken world, there may also be pieces I would never willingly choose.

But contentment no longer requires me to know what comes next.

I know the One holding the thread.

Contentment isn’t trusting that every piece of my story will be beautiful. It’s trusting that no matter what the next piece holds, His love will still be woven through it.

That is where contentment has begun to take root in me.

Not in guarantees.

Not in predictable circumstances.

Not in the promise that I will never experience pain again.

But in the confidence that the same God whose faithful love pursued me through every chapter behind me will remain exactly who He is in every chapter ahead.

His love has never left my side.

His love never fails.

And the more deeply I understand that, the more freely I can loosen my grip on tomorrow.

Reflection: Father, Show Me the Thread

Maybe when you look back over your own life, certain chapters immediately stand out because of their pain. Perhaps there are pieces you have labeled rejection, loss, failure, betrayal, unanswered prayer, or even abandonment. Maybe there are places where you still don’t understand why something happened, and perhaps you never will this side of eternity.

I don’t want to encourage you to force a spiritual explanation onto those wounds, nor convince yourself that something painful was secretly good. Instead, I want to invite you to ask a different question.

Father, show me the thread.

Ask Him to show you where His love was present in the chapters you have only ever known to call painful. Where did He sustain you? Who did He send? How did He provide? Where did He protect you in ways you couldn’t recognize at the time? How did He pursue you when you pulled away? Where has He redeemed something broken, or how is He still redeeming it today?

You may not receive an explanation for every piece.

But perhaps, as you sit with Him, you will begin to recognize the thread.

Take some time to prayerfully look back over your story. If it helps, journal the seasons that come to mind and simply ask Holy Spirit, Where was Your love here? Don’t rush to manufacture an answer. Allow Him to show you what He wants you to see.

You may discover, just as I have, that the story you thought was primarily about everything you survived has actually been telling another story all along.

The story of how faithfully you have been loved.

Prayer

Father,

Thank You for the thread of Your love that has been woven throughout every chapter of my story. Thank You for the beautiful pieces, the redeemed pieces, and even for the places where I can now look back and recognize that although You did not author my pain, You never abandoned me within it.

Forgive me for the times I have misunderstood Your heart. Heal the places where pain, disappointment, or earthly relationships have caused me to hear Your voice with a harshness that does not reflect who You truly are. Teach me to recognize the tenderness of Your correction, the kindness of Your conviction, and the mercy that continually invites me closer.

Thank You for pursuing me with faithful love all the days of my life. Thank You for carrying me when I could not carry myself, sustaining me when I thought I would unravel, comforting me in grief, correcting me in love, and remaining faithful even in seasons when I was still learning how to be faithful to You.

Holy Spirit, help me see the thread. Show me where Your love has been present in the chapters I still struggle to understand. Give me eyes to recognize Your faithfulness without minimizing the pain I experienced. Redeem what is broken, heal what still hurts, and use every part of my story to point back to Jesus.

As I look toward the chapters I have not yet lived, teach me to rest in who You have already proven Yourself to be. I may not know what the next piece will hold, but I know You will be there.

Let that truth become the foundation of my contentment.

Your love has been with me every stitch of the way.

And I trust that it always will be.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Coming Next: Part 8

In the final part of The Year God Redefined Contentment series, I’ll return to the word that started this entire journey. After everything God has uncovered—fear, control, mercy, love, safety, and the thread of His love—I can finally see that contentment was never the lesson I thought He was going to teach me.

It was an invitation into something deeper.

In Part 8, I’ll share what I now believe God meant when He gave me the word I didn’t want—and how discovering His heart changed the meaning of contentment altogether.

With Love,