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.

Perspectives

"Why me?" I hear her moan;

"Why this broken mess?"

"Why am I all alone—

toiling daily, while he's free?"

"Why, why, why, God?"

"Why me?"

"Why me?" I look above;

"Why do You never quit?"

"Why do You love, love,

love me? You never flee,

You take delight...Why, God?"

"Why me?"

"Why me?" I hear her cry;

"Why all of my friends?"

"Why doesn't someone try

to love me in all my debris?"

"Will no man choose me, God?"

"Why me?"

"Why me?" I look around;

"Why his lavish love?"

"It overwhelms, astounds,

builds up, inspires, sets free."

"Why" I whisper, "Why, God?"

"Why me?"

Why?

Oh, the questions we ask You, Begetter of the universe. 

You, Who spun waves and particles into golden light, we question if Your hands are big enough to hold us. You, Who breathed life into our spirits and our dusty frames, we pause to ask if You care about us. You, Whose finger carved words into the dirt, we ask if You care enough to write our stories, to show us what You want from us and for us.

You, Who entered time, slipped into skin, felt rejection and loneliness—we presume You have left us when our blind eyes cannot see You, and Your presence is not palpable. You, Who are called the Light of the world, we ask where You have gone when we wander in darkness. You, Who carefully marked the trenches of the world, poured its foundation, and sent the Cornerstone, why do we think You are incapable of answering our question marks?

Why does our friend have to walk through that valley? Our family member suffer that pain? Why do our own hearts, crushed, drip red in the darkness and in the blaze of day?

We ask when You will show up, why You allowed tragic loss, why there is emptiness sucking at our hearts like a black hole. Why does the darkness feel overwhelming, when the Light has rendered darkness outmoded, dead, and chased away?

There was a time when You stepped into our world. When eternity became now. You bought us back from hopeless death. And still we question. Still we scream. Still we shake our fists and walk away. You, Who never promised life would be easy, we expect to right everything, now. You, Who never explained Yourself to Job, we expect to spell out every answer to our every why? We expect You to operate like we do, to think in our human boxes, in our narrow line of sight. You, Creator, Sustainer, Holy One, Alpha, Omega... You, immortal, immutable, invisible, we ask to explain Yourself to our finite minds, to contain Yourself in a kernel of knowing that will fit inside of us. But You cannot be contained in our minds, in our paltry understanding, or in our broken hearts.

You are bigger than that—vast, eternal. You fill us, overfull, and splash out onto those we touch. Your love only multiplies. The ringing of Your Truth reverberates throughout the galaxies, resounding through the entire universe. How can we think it is all contained in one book, in one heart, in one mind, in one planet? 

It is not that we do not need to know why—sometimes we cannot know an answer so immense. We are too close to see the whole, to see clearly. We cannot explain away pain, abandoned hearts, our death valleys, or all the other dark shadows that cross over our lives. Neither can we explain why the storm clouds come to us, or why the Light doesn't break through and scare all our monsters away. Maybe we aren't strong enough to endure the illuminating rays that would break those clouds, eliminate that darkness. Perhaps we are being made ready to bear the weight of light—something weightless in our world—that, coming from the heavenly realm, is so dense that it would crush us. 

In a moment of unknowing I whisper, But why, God? Then, I choose to hang my question on these spoken pegs of Hope, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. I do not always know what that Mercy looks like in this moment, in this day, in this shadow world. What form will Mercy take? Sometimes His Mercy is severe. Once, it took the form of flesh, nailed to a cross—suffering with us.

God is not "out there" but right here, with us—even when I cannot feel Him or see Him, and the clouds do not part. He is not against me—or you. He does not say why He does what He does, or why He allows various things. He withholds His mighty hand at times, and I don't know why. I only know He will not leave us all alone.

Lord have mercy.

Christ have mercy.

Lord have mercy.

Grant us Your peace.

Why?

Do you ever find that the answer to "Why all of this, God?" is, "I am Good." It is not "I am God" - though in another way it is that, too. But His answer is "I am Good." 

And He is.

He is good, whether or not the situation changes. He is good, when the heart of a man is slow to change, and all we feel is the tension. He is good when cancer is not cured, or the car crash happens. He is good when He holds us in the midst of searing pain, though He may not remove us, or it. 

God's goodness is not trite. And often pain, sorrow, suffering, and loss are felt more intensely in the midst of knowing just how good God is. Yet it is His goodness that brings Him to walk with us now through the valley of the shadow, through anger, through disappointment, through realising we do not have what it takes to be this or that. We do not have a God Who suffered with us, but a God Who suffers with us, present tense. That is Good. That is God. And that is why.

~ Johanna