Mother’s Day is a day fraught with feelings. I know since I have navigated many of them through the years. On this second Sunday in May, however, it feels more like the winter of my discontent. Both both my mother and my mother-in-law are heaven and most likely I won't be seeing my son. I ruminate on the “if onlys,” and contentment remains elusive, just out of my grasp.

It’s tempting to blame my discontent on these dark days in which we live, especially when an author of a popular Christian book writes: “This text contains a very timely cordial to revive the drooping spirits of the saints in these sad and sinking times. For the ‘hour of temptation’ has already come upon all the world to try the inhabitants of the earth.”

Oh, wait, I omitted an important detail: this book was first published in 1641 by Puritan preacher Jeremiah Burroughs. It’s The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, and the text Burroughs referred to as a timely cordial is Philippians 4:11, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”

The Apostle Paul’s words remain both timely and a remedy for discontented souls.

Burroughs describes Christian contentment as “that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.” And this old Puritan’s definition of the word "submit" is that it "signifies nothing else but to ‘send under.’” A discontented heart will be “unruly” and place itself above God. The grace of contentment sends the heart under—under God’s rightful rule.

This was something that Paul said he had to learn, and learn he did in a practicum of afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights and hunger (2 Corinthians 6:4-10).

Paul also had heard the Lord’s graced words in his weakness, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10), and in submitting his heart freely to God, he learned contentment—that sweet, inward heart-thing, that quiet heart Burroughs described.

We learn all this and more from another gentle lowly heart who submitted to the Father, who invites us to come to him, to learn from him. Stop struggling under the burdens of an unruly, discontented, puffed-up heart. Take his yoke, submit to him and find rest for our souls.

On this Mother’s Day weekend, I am sending my unruly heart under—under the hand of our good God—and learning once again of his Father's heart and of his loyal love. And now it is not only the spring of my contentment, but also the summer, fall and winter.