The Search for Satisfaction

I often wake up at 1AM starved.

The type of starvation where it feels like you drank 4 cups of coffee at once. Wired. Past the point of hunger. Just famished!

Whenever these seasons of sleeplessness hit, a go-to fix of mine is spoonfuls… and I mean spoonfuls of peanut butter.

My roommate knows this rhythm first-hand – he sees my peanut butter covered spoon in the kitchen sink the next morning and immediately assumes I woke up in the middle of the night.

He’d be right

But honestly, it cancels out my restless frustration from the wired-filled night. It satisfies me until I need another scoop the next night. And in an almost psychotic way, I look forward to that scoop.

—

As I sit here processing my sleeplessness, I can’t help but think how “starved” I am in other areas of my life, too, and how that same scoop of peanut butter always seems to keep me coming back never fully satisfied.

Weird thought thread to have, I know. Peanut butter and life.. how does that connect?

Hear me out.

Assuming here, but I feel like other young adults may be feeling this too.

If I were to cross-reference my sleepless peanut butter nights with the state of my soul, I’d say their more alike than they are different.

Starved.

Just like my stomach in the early morning hours, my soul is empty looking for something to satisfy it.

And honestly, that “something” I often choose to satisfy never does. Maybe temporarily… until I need more.

In seasons of my life, the search for satisfaction looked like popularity, success, parties, “making memories”, acceptance, being needed. In other seasons, it’s looked like religion, striving, busyness, “doing,” image, the couch, the next media binge session, a completed to do list.

Transparently, I go through ebbs and flows with each of these pitfalls, still. Why do I do what I ought not do and don’t do what I ought to do? (Romans 7:15-20)

However, regardless of season and struggle, 4 reflections jump off the page as I process these areas of false satisfaction as a young adult:

1. At a soul level, I am starved of something.

2. I don’t find true satisfaction from the people, experiences, and things I think will give me satisfaction.

3. What am I starved of?

4. What will actually satisfy?

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I recently spent time with a few close friends laughing and discussing our way through “Praying Like Monks Living Like Fools” (dope title, even better book… highly recommend – buy it here).

On one of the last pages of the book, the author states something profound that caught my eye.

“It’s not enough to believe in the accepting love of God. We have to allow God to love us exactly as we are, naked and unashamed. By Christ’s intercession, the love of God seeps into every crack of our inner world, and the Spirit opens our eyes to discover ourselves as we really are – fixed in the gaze of God’s love.”

A lot there, I know.

What grabbed me though was that “we have to allow God to love us exactly as we are, naked and unashamed.”

Naked and unashamed in the sense that we are undressed and separate from all the things we like to “clothe” ourselves with to find satisfaction.

Things like…

Popularity, success, parties, “making memories”, acceptance, being needed, religion, striving, busyness, “doing,” image, the couch, the next media binge session.

And instead, clothed in the love of God. His generous love not our chase for it.

It makes me question…

Am I love-starved?

Just like I am peanut butter starved? ()

In my restlessness, have I been searching for crumbs to satisfy my hunger (crumbs being popularity, acceptance, money, busyness, religion, etc) all the while there is a feast available for me (God’s love) if I just look up, believe, and receive?

That sounds about right. A sheep I can be!

I am frequently learning that it starts with both knees surrendered to Jesus resting in that feast of love.

A feast that states “even though we are still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8)…

meaning even though we still look for crumbs to satisfy, Christ chooses us, loves us, knows us, and gives us a feast that overflows.

As young adults living in a satisfaction-promised world, I’m finding (through failure) that God’s love is where livin’ to the full is found, where satisfaction is found.

Not in the title, the money, the comforts, the things, the couch, the vacation, the memory.

But God’s love.

A love that chooses

knows

and satisfies us,

even though we “are still sinners.”

Are you love starved? What are “crumbs” do you run to to temporarily satisfy emptiness? What does true satisfaction look like?