The Maze

Searching for the path to happiness  

Have you looked to different things to make you happy but discovered they didn’t?  Me too!

I felt like I was lost in a maze, trying to find the right path to happiness but each path I took was a dead end. I longed to feel like an OK person, an acceptable human being. I thought if people liked me or thought well of me, that would mean I was worthy of being.  

However, I was looking for contentment in the wrong places. In the end, striving to be liked and accepted caused me so much stress; I never felt good enough; there were always people cleverer, funnier, prettier, more confident than me. This battered my already fragile self-confidence and led to me becoming anorexic.  

In denial, I hoped being thin would make me happy. Certainly, in the short-term people’s compliments made me feel approved of. However, people soon lost interest and I hit the hedge at the end of this new dead end and collapsed into bulimia and depression.  

What do you believe would make you happy? What are you chasing? Which wrong paths are you walking? Though these things are not wrong in themselves, when our hope is in exam passes, popularity, promotion, prosperity, we end up striving and stressed, disappointed and depressed. 

I encourage you to go to the true source of happiness – Jesus. He reassures us that we are loved and valuable, so much so that He came to save us. He has a perfect purpose for us. 

“You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” Psalm 16:11 

Find a church that tells you Jesus loves you and explains how loving and following Him is what satisfies us. 

If you’re lost in the maze struggling to find contentment, tell a Christian you trust. If there’s a Celebrate Recovery group, go along! They’ll point you to Jesus to show you the way out of your maze – and to the contentment you crave. 

Father God, I’m sorry that I have looked to created things to fulfil me instead of You, the Creator. Help me to trust Jesus to lead me out of this maze of dead-ends that I have found myself in so that I can find joy in Your presence. Thank You that You say I am enough because of Jesus, that I am loved and accepted. Amen.