I saw a short video this afternoon while I could have been doing anything else that held the premise that when we do what we are, we lose a lot of the dross that drags us down.
The “catchphrase” in the video was painters paint. The video was a young man recounting how his father wouldn’t strategize how to solve problems when his son called, in a funk and lonely. He would just say, “Have you been painting?” It put me in mind of the idiom “writers write”. And I haven’t been.
I am not primarily a writer, however. I am a worshipper. And while writing is something I enjoy, I don’t have to write to be myself. And sometimes writing doesn’t help.
Worship always helps.
So I am drawn here to worship in a way that honors all God made me to be.
I saw a truck like this on my way home one day (I used AI to generate this one here). It struck a chord with me. It was so simple and easy to remember. I have thought on it many times over the last week.
Whatever is wrong will be made right. God IS moving.
My timing is rushed and reckless. God calls me to be PATIENT.
When I don’t see results in my timing, I am tempted to give up, but God tells me DON’T.
It can seem like an oversimplification or spiritual bypassing. I have taken words like these as a sort of condescending platitude. But when I was feeling alone and empty after an afternoon of being on the periphery of a group, that truck passing by was like a direct message from God.
Which I promptly ignored, determined to think my way out of my feelings.
But that moving truck has gotten lots more mileage through my mind as it comes around and around again: God is moving. Be patient. Don’t give up.
The beginning of the school year caught me… I can’t say by surprise, because it’s not like I don’t have a calendar that’s in my hand roughly four hours a day. I knew it was coming. I even had FIRST DAY OF CC! in my calendar app weeks ahead of time. I had reached out to someone for help with planning my reading lessons. I was trying to finish. that. math. curriculum. But I also had my head so filled with all the insanity of signing up for a freelance job and then the ridiculous guilt of quitting that job that sitting down and planning anything seemed about as impossible as getting up and running a marathon.
I can tell I am overwhelmed by the length of my sentences. Well, not just the length; the quality of them. I write and speak in run-ons when my mind working against me, as if the full stop of a sentence risks me not getting the information out in time. What could happen between the breaths those end marks require? I could decide, as I often do, that the rest of what I have to say just doesn’t matter. If I pause too long I can build an entire, iron-clad case against my own reasons. My hands or my mouth may stop moving, but my mind doesn’t. When I am more relaxed, I don’t fear myself. But when I get overwhelmed, if I try to say anything in defense of my actions or feelings it must be said in those rushed run-ons with prepositions galore and barely a pause for breath — even a comma is dicey — because if I dare let myself silence myself I will.
So I have spent the past few weeks in that awful space of feeling like I need help, not sure what sort of help I need, pretty sure I don’t deserve help, thinking maybe I am being overly dramatic about my situation, certain that there is no way to express any of this to anyone without making a huge ass of myself. (Language, I know; give me a better phrase and I will use it.)
But the long and the short of it is, at the time I should have been in the thick of planning for this year’s homeschool I was instead taking long work calls and spending hours filing — not to mention the time lost of being fully in my head about the whole situation once I realized I didn’t have the hours to keep the job. And now, I am looking at yet another week of homeschool for which I feel ill-prepared to teach my children. And that’s just the basic, logistical, explainable portion of why I have spent the past few weeks under a mountain of guilt and overwhelm.
But God.
Last night, God reminded me through our weekly family singing time that God has given me everything I need already; that the flame shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. I could hear that song every single day and still be astounded at all God has promised and provided. But then I went to church and the pastor apparently decided to preach to me directly as he spoke on God’s sovereignty. How can I believe that God is in control and still try to figure it all out myself??? There is no spreadsheet, no logical argument, no beautiful, color-coded plan that will solve a heart that doesn’t cry out to the Only Wise King for living water.
I must repent of my pride.
I have repented, though this requires some accountability now, because I know myself; I have had this same realization in different forms for the last fifteen years. I need to find someone to check in with on a regular (maybe daily) basis who can help me quickly confess and repent of the pride I am so wont to walk in. I wrote a Think List for when I can feel that crummy guilt keeping me down, but I tend to get off the path long before I feel the mud sucking at my feet. If you don’t know what a Think List is, let me show you what I scribbled down during the sermon today as a potential Think List for this “I am a failure” funk:
There is a God and I am not Him
His yoke is easy and His burden is light
His commands are not burdensome
He is close to the brokenhearted
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven (Psalm 32)
Repent, rejoice, repeat
This isn’t my best Think List, but essentially it’s a list of truths to combat a lie or lies that want to choke out all the benefits of being God’s. A single verse is powerful enough to dispel any lie, but often our minds need to drown out particularly noisy lies.
I’m thinking that I don’t just need the Think List for when I feel bad; I need to spend real time dwelling on these truths and confessing/repenting quickly when I am not living them.
But again — God is good and He will not be confined to a method. He is transforming me and working on me through all this. He alone gets the glory for showing me my pride, and He alone will get the glory if by some miracle I leave this life with less of it.
In my mind, this post was really good but I think I got a unnecessarily rambley and self-reflective. I will leave it alone because I am not at a point in my life where polished writing is the goal. I just need to keep getting the words out, keep posting, because in this I might finally prove to myself that I can (however imperfectly) keep my word to myself, even when no one is asking me to do it and maybe no one benefits from this.
I have about fifteen minutes to hammer out something for the three people who read this thing.
So, it only makes sense to address my last post. I was absolutely weighed down with the burden of my failures. I won’t try to soften that. I also won’t lie and pretend that I haven’t failed massively over and over again. I can see how in many cases there were mitigating factors. I am aware that I do not live in a vacuum and therefore my failures are rarely solely mine. This doesn’t make my failures any less failures.
But I am not weighed down by them at this point; I want to say “I am not weighed down my them anymore,” but this projects a confidence in Future Foundmercy that I don’t possess. I may likely pick up my burdens again this very afternoon, though I pray I don’t. What I know for sure is that I did cast my cares on the only One who can shoulder them. I repented of the foolishness of believing that any of my responsibilities are mine alone to carry.
The thing is, I can simultaneously be aware that I am “making too much of myself” and unaware of how, or how much. God is kinder than me. I tend to believe I should lie in the bed I have made. I believe that if I face suffering or pain, that I ought to endure it on the basis that i deserve it. I mean, I deserve hell, don’t I? JC Ryle says I do. (Check out some quotes from him here: https://www.gracegems.org/30/short_pithy_gems_from_jc_ryle.htm) I don’t ask God for help because I think I should deserve help before I ask. How completely full of myself that is!
Three more minutes. What shall I leave you, dear reader, with? With what shall I leave you? Correct grammar! Ha!
If you think you need to deserve grace to get it, that is not grace.
The gospel says that we are all wretched sinners that God loved so much that He sent His Son to make a way to redeem us. There’s no earning that. And He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
The theme of the week seems to be, for me, radical self-acceptance. The God who named Himself “I am” seems to be quite alright with us being who we are as well. This naturally comes as quite a shock to me. I grew up hearing messaging from everywhere that we should never be okay with ourselves as we are now, that we should always be striving to be better.
When I met God, I brought all the garbage I had accumulated with me. One particularly heavy bag I carried was the idea that the whole purpose of life was to be consistently “leveling up”, always “one percent better”, always seeking to improve.
Like the perfect Father He is, when He ran out to meet me He took that bag (along with the all the others) and set them aside to embrace me. I felt the weight lift immediately, and that feeling of total freedom intoxicated me. I have never forgotten that first breath of new life. But oh how quickly I picked my garbage back up and sought to follow after Him with all of it still clinging to me like the Junk Lady from The Labyrinth.
I have used Bible passages to justify this. I have run myself into the ground over and over again. I have hurt people in ways I could never have imagined over this lie, this obsession with becoming someone worthy of love. I was convinced before I met God that I would be worthy of love if I could be good enough; I was convinced after meeting Him that on my own I never would be good enough; and today I am beginning to understand that He never wanted me to be good enough, with or without Him. He just wants me — as I am.
Jesus didn’t come to begin a process of sanctification that would, in the end, make me worthy. In His leaving the Throne and taking on flesh He pronounced me worthy. The prodigal son wasn’t accepted back in to the family as a servant. There is no earning love with God. As it says in The Discipline of Grace, “God never intended that we relate to Him directly” (p 23). I read this years ago and the understanding has only deepened with time. Jesus isn’t a hall pass or permission slip; He isn’t my get out of jail free card; He isn’t waiting in the wings for me to need His forgiveness again and again. He settled it all on the cross. It is finished.
So where does that leave my obsession with “one percent better”? I still have a terrible drive; I am motivated to learn; I am restless with imperfection. My mind churns problems into solutions seemingly without any effort of will; I am most excited about life with I have a reasonably-sized problem to tackle. Finally, after many years and missteps and mistakes and failures, I am learning to accept that this love of problem-solving can be a gift . . . as long as I remember that people are not problems.
I am not a problem to be solved. I am a person that God (God! Holy, Perfect, Lovely God!!) loved enough to sacrifice His Son and His life for, who loves me enough to abide with me and lead me through life like a good shepherd.
And this isn’t only true when I am behaving well or navel-gazing, writing these heady thoughts down. No; it was true when I was barking orders last night; it was true when I responded with impatience; it was true when I judged someone much more harshly than I would like to be judged; it was true when I was selfish. And it will be true again when I inevitably mess up. I can only repent because I do not have to fear what will happen to me when I own up.
I am learning to trust the grace that I love. Maybe this isn’t so much about self-acceptance as it is trusting God . . . but it is He who made me. I cannot reasonably trust Him while holding myself in contempt. He doesn’t hold Himself back from me. And he doesn’t hold Himself back from you.
I don’t know who these are for. Hopefully someone other than me. Thank you for reading. God loves you.
This week I am not brimming with something to talk about. I could delve into my perennial frustration with being a human. I could talk about the subjugation of friendship to media platforms. I have much to say about homeschooling influencers and the unbelievable amount of people who are preying on parents who just want to do what is best for their kids.
My husband said I could write about what I thought about the sermon this morning. I don’t feel like I have much to say, but here goes . . .
The sermon was about Psalm 34. The church with which we’re currently worshipping is doing a summer series on Psalms with various preachers. Psalms can be overlooked or seen as supplemental to understanding YHWH. When I was younger, I spent the majority of my time in the New Testament and was always making note of the commands so I could follow them. (I was terrified of being “no better than the demons”, and I didn’t truly grasp that I was literally incapable of obeying on my own. That is a whole different post.) Psalms felt like something older people who already were good at obeying might read. It is a pattern I observed, that older people quoted more from Psalms than the younger people. And older people seemed to cling to the Psalms in a way I couldn’t quite understand. I assumed that it was because of their maturity.
Well, I know I am not mature, but in the last few years I have discovered that nothing compares with the Psalms if you want to know who God is and who you are as a believer, and how He works in the world. Are you wondering if you’re worth anything? Psalm 139. Are you frustrated that people who want nothing to do with God or His ways seem to prosper? Psalm 73. Are you wondering if He could possibly still love you after all you have done? Psalm 51. Feel forgotten? Psalm 86. Those are just off the top of my head. I am sure someone more diligent than I has already compiled an index of Psalms. But really, nothing beats just reading them regularly and finding their words rising to your mind in those moments of uncertainty or joy.
Psalm 34 is in essence of psalm of triumph; David had escaped from the Philistine king and was extolling God for this. Like most psalms, it masterfully weaves human emotion with God’s unshakable glory.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him! Fear the Lord, you his godly people, for those who fear him will have all they need.
While we love to quote “taste and see”, David didn’t forget that the fear of the Lord, taking refuge in Him, is a requirement for tasting that goodness. I know the analytic among us will likely see this as condition for God’s love. All I can say to that is this: if you read the Psalms, you will find a better argument for trusting God than all the explanations I can give. His steadfast love endures forever. He is worthy of praise. His mercy is unfathomable and He desires His people in a way that would make most sensible people blush.
I love to make much of God’s mercy, but I can’t do that without also making much of His worthiness . . . and I fear in making much of His holiness, majesty, glory I lose the people He wants to save and further entrench those of whom He said, “I never knew you.” This is my failure, but the Psalms show the way:
Unfailing love and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed! – Psalm 85:10
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