Looking for more

I was working on some ad concepts the other day, and, not satisfied with the ideas I had, I ran them by a friend, sort of talking them through to figure out what I was doing. She looked at me and said, “I tried on hundreds of wedding dresses but ended up buying the second one I tried. You’re a lot like that, too, aren’t you? I think these are already finished; you just don’t know it yet.”

I laughed, but the comment has been on my mind ever since. Why do we do that? We find what we want and don’t want to settle, or don’t want to commit, or think it was too easy, and so we waste countless hours re-examining things, looking for something marginally better. I think sometimes we do this with God, too. When we first discover Him, we have something good, but we think it’s supposed to be better — we’re supposed to be more disciplined, or pray more, or read the Bible more, or hear from Him more — so instead of reveling in what we have, we keep looking for more. We are afraid of the ways in which our relationship with Him is lacking, so we explore and examine it and criticize it. But finally, if we’re lucky, we recognize what an amazing thing we had. And when we go back to Him, we find He’s been there waiting for us all along.