Lately, I’ve been amazed at how much has changed in my life in a relatively short period of time.

On July 19, 2011, my mother died. It was the beginning of many changes to come—the loss of both my best friend and my sister to cancer; my move to Haiti for a school year to teach English; my marriage to a man I’ve known all my life but had never considered dating, let alone marrying ever before; the gaining of a mother and daughter-in law, step children and grandchildren; a change in career; a move to a different town; a change of church; and a thankfulness for God’s large and small provisions that I’ve never known before.

Sometimes when I’m alone and left to my private ideas and thoughts, I am overwhelmed by a sense of nostalgia that becomes sadness for what was but is no longer. I miss my mother, my best friend, my sister, my old job, my old house and the life I used to live—even though my life now is much better than ever before.

I listened to an interview the other night on NPR with an author who attributed the human condition of never maintaining satisfaction to natural selection. Our lack of contentment is a way of ensuring that the species survives. For example, we continue to get hungry because we must eat to survive; we have an ongoing sexual desire because we must propagate to survive.

Christianity calls for us to turn this tendency into a desire for God. After all, he is the only one who can truly satisfy us, but like all our desires, we must continue to seek and to ask for more: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8).

Christina and her husband, Dale, call The Crossing home. She is a school teacher and part of The Crossing Blog Team.