Enough

Enough! I've had enough! 

Much of my life I have felt inadequate because I don't nuance and parse things with the wisdom of my discerning (intuitive) friends. I'm not wise. I lack depth. I try to cover up my shame in that by being intelligent, but my cover is blown after only a few rounds back and forth in a debate. Rather than going any further, which feels futile to me, I just quit. 

I have a bad habit of quitting. Quitting conversations, quitting ideas, quitting when something gets hard and I don't care enough to keep trying. 

Yet I have climbed mountains, when once I swore I'd never again climb even a foothill. By the grace of God (through other people) friendships have grown, even when they have shifted—I want to learn to do that better. All that to say, there is hope. Hope that I will persevere.

Still, I don't nuance—I say what I mean, not thinking how deeply and widely it might be misconstrued by someone who does parse every word a thousand miles down the line. How do I explain that, "Nope, I'm not that deep, I just meant this thing on the surface level as far as my nearsighted eyes could see in all directions?" But I am ashamed to admit my ineptitude. I shudder to know how often I have made others feel inadequate in who they are or how they process—because I despise being treated that way.

Is it wrong not to pursue everything to the last degree? What if something isn't meant to its last degree? Then it would be wrong to chase it there. I take things and ideas and people at whatever depth they are presented to me. I compare their words and actions. Both matter. But I find that actions matter more to me—especially other people's actions. When they don't match, I believe their actions more. But of course, my own actions should matter most to me, because those are the only ones I can change. I have high ideals and I fail to meet them. My own actions tell me that ideals are hard to practice, but still I expect other people to live up to their ideals. Alas for inconsistency!

I want other people to grow, and I want to grow. Yet, sometimes all I can see is my past failure or someone else's behaviour pattern—and I despair of growth for any of us. Is growth impossible? No. In fact, growth is probable. But some obstacles feel insurmountable, some broken things appear irreparable, and some growth requires me dying to my self—and I can't hold those crucifixion nails up to my own hands. . .

. . . How quickly I forget that I don't have to grow of my own power. How rapidly I lose sight of the fact that I am not the one nailing my sin—with its passions and desires—up to the cross. How often do I function like I believe I can save myself or fix myself—or be good enough to measure up to whatever standard I don't meet and think I should? 

I am inadequate. 

I can't live up to my own ideals.

I can't live up to someone else's ideal version of me.  

So I quit trying to live up to a false ideal...even if I feel damned by everyone else who effortlessly processes the way they do because they were created to do it that way. I process the way I do because I was crafted thus, why isn't that enough for me? If that is how God shaped me, shouldn't I seek to process in the way He gave me? Why do I grasp for what I don't have, can't do, as if He gave me the wrong thing? 

God didn't make a mistake. 

He didn't make a mistake...so why do I treat Him as if He did? Why do I treat myself as if God made a mistake and I just need to try harder to be like all of my intuitive friends? Most of them don't actually mind if I don't process the way they do—so why do I mind? Because I've been led to believe that processing like a sensor is somehow lesser. It is how "simple" people, dumb people, process. And God forbid that I fall into those categories, because I fear them. I desperately fear them like the pit of sheol. 

But doesn't God take the foolish things of this world and show His wisdom through them? Doesn't God confound the wise through the simple? Why am I so afraid of being the very thing God says He uses? Why am I afraid to be less than enough? 

After all, I will never be enough. I can never save myself...or fix myself. I am not adequate. I want to grow, but I will never be the ideal thinker, the ideal Christian, the ideal woman.

If I only ever think on the surface, then may it be whatever glimmer of God's thoughts I can learn to think after Him. If I must expose the fact that I am simple and foolish, then please, God, show Your wisdom through me.

LORD, I am a vessel—the ignoble one. Let me serve Your purpose well. Help me to stop saying, Why? Why have You made me thus?

You don't make mistakes.

You made me Yours.

And being Yours...

...is enough,

and much

more.