Friday, August 9, 2013

On Failing, or 'How I Pretend to Keep it Together'

This is my first blog post, and I'm going to talk about my shortcomings. Before you crack a joke about me being a short girl, quit your yappin'. I'm about to do some serious things.

Today was the first day in a long time that I felt incapable. Well, not a long time. I feel incapable often, but in smaller quantities. This was serious. I felt like an infant being asked to run a marathon. All jokes aside, it was really hard to feel so helpless, so incapable, so lost at sea. I just accepted a new job (in May) and I have kind of been coasting through this summer. I'm a preschool teacher/director, and we have the summer off, and I might have taken some more liberties than I should have. I got stuff done, but apparently not enough stuff. Because today made me feel like I had fallen off a ship and was rapidly floating away in stormy waters, my cries for help unheard by the crew.

Being confronted with such smallness is tremendously difficult. It's days like today that remind me that I'm sort of a hot mess. I don't have it all together. Sometimes I drag myself out of bed, pull my hair into a ponytail, throw on the nearest clothes and call it good. I don't always look my best. Most of the time, I feel like I barely make it through the days.

It's incredibly easy to focus on the things we're bad at, to look in the mirror and see the blemishes, to only recognize the ways in which we fail. On a day-to-day basis, the number of negative things I say to and about myself far outnumber the positives. I was focused on my physical/mental/emotional capabilities, but it really got me to thinking....how often do we do this as Christians? How often do we say, "I'm not good enough. How could God love me? How could God call me his child? I'm a mess. I dislike my body, and I don't treat my neighbor with respect, and I don't love myself. What is loveable about THIS?!"

God hears that. All of it. God shakes his head and says, "Come to me. You have a tremendous burden and you seriously need to rest in my arms. Just fall into me. I'll do the rest."

"But...but, but NO!" we say. "Let me have a shower first. Let me pray a little, let me go do a good deed, let me just brush my hair and wash my neighbor's feet....then I'll be good," we say. "Then I'll be O.K. in your sight. You don't want me like this," we say.

"Stop." God says. "I want you just as you are. I'm asking you to let me hold you. Just let me."


So I did. As Brennan Manning so eloquently states, “Lord, when I feel that what I'm doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.”

Do what you do. It may be exhausting. You may feel entirely incompetent. But it's yours to do, with the power of the universe and the God of glory holding you up. Then, at the end of the day, fall into the arms of a Savior who doesn't care when you did laundry or how dirty your hair is or whether or not your socks match or if you turned in that report on time.


Love,
Brooke + JuneBug 



1 comment:

  1. Wow, very well written... So much truth in this (for me at least), it really hit home and made me think. Thank you

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