Continuing with the Ferrari analogy from previously. . . I’ve been thinking and praying. One thing that I’ve asked is for God to reveal my heart. Where are the dark places inside of me? What resulted from that prayer has been a mental and spiritual journey that has broken the foundations of everything that I have believed about myself and God. I don’t have it fully articulated yet. I’m still trying to figure this out. But I want to share this early part of the journey with the preface that I’ve spent most of my adult life feeling like a caged animal and with an unidentifiable anxiety. I’m missing something. I’ve missed a fork in the road that took me off of God’s plan for my life. This is the jumping-off point for all that follows. I am not proud of the things that I’ve written. They were awful and messed up in my head, but it is worse by far to see them written down. But I NEED to get to the end of this, and God will only honor this journey if it is honest.
Lord,
There’s been a lot of craziness at work lately and at home with the kids. I asked You to reveal the contents of my heart, because yesterday morning You told me (again) that I can’t fix anything except myself, and that only through You. What You’ve revealed in Your wisdom is hard to see. I am controlling, micromanaging my kids, to their great frustration. Nothing for me is good enough. Not just my kids. I look at everything, all of Your blessings, and see nothing but fault. I am manipulative, saying things to draw attention to all that is wrong, hoping to draw attention away from my errors and shortcomings. Lord, how do I have more grace? For myself and toward others? How do I stop fault finding? Do I truly understand your Grace?
I can’t fix any of this without You. I NEED You to help me. Forgive me for my fault finding and critical nature, that I see reflected back at me in my kids. I see their harsh measure of judgement at times, and I know that I have modeled that to them. Forgive me, Lord. Redeem these things in me. You have replaced my lies with truth; You have replaced my fear with faith. Lord, redeem me again. Let me embrace the freedom that You have already bought. I lay my critical nature at Your feet. Please take it! God forbid that anyone should use my measure of judgement to judge me. Who am I to judge and find fault with Your creation? You are the potter. The creator. You may do with us as You please and You choose to love. Help me to do Grace better. I pray that You crumble this stronghold within me of fault finding. I’ve lived my whole life this way. Help me, Lord. I don’t know how to do it another way. In the Name of Jesus, I lay it down, Lord. I sacrifice my flesh to You.
This is the prayer I wrote into my journal at the beginning of the day. As I walked through the day, thinking and praying, more revelations came to me.
Lord,
I’ve been thinking a lot today. WHY do I micromanage my kids? WHY do I have undefined anxiety? WHY do I so often feel defeated and like I’m not living a full life? And I know now that it’s because I’m deeply, profoundly, horribly disappointed in my life. Fear and lack of motivation and willfulness have kept me from doing all that I thought I would do. I thought it would be extraordinary. I thought I would do something great for mankind. I thought I would go amazing places and do amazing things. Instead, I feel stuck here, in this quiet, slow place. I am married to someone who is a good, Godly man, but who wants to go nowhere and do nothing except work, get out of debt, help people where he can, and generally live life as simply and quietly as possible. I used to feel like a caged animal. Some of the worst fights I had with my husband have been because I felt caged and weighed down and I hadn’t done anything great for mankind and it certainly wasn’t extraordinary. I look at everyone around me and I see others who are more intelligent than me or more spiritual than me or more disciplined than me or more successful than me or with more beautiful homes than me or more invitations than me or busier than me or contributing more than me. Everything was a competition. I needed to keep up. I wanted everything. Every heightened and uplifted experience. Every exciting place. Not drugs or parties or designer anything. Tasteful and classic beauty. Objects with stories. Uniqueness. Elevated conversation. Deep thoughts and books that went beyond Christian “self-help.” In my mind it’s never been about God being sovereign. I don’t doubt that He’s all powerful. I know that He can do anything. I fear it and desire it all at once. There are no boundaries with Him. In Him, there is no limit to experiencing every extraordinary thing. Where I began to run into trouble was that He does not choose that for everyone. In fact, after I heard Christine Caine speak at a leadership event and learned about the horrors of child sex trafficking, I realized God does not even choose good for everyone. He is there in those moments when children are being raped and abused and He does nothing. For about five years I followed God, but I was angry at Him. And I had people say things like God doesn’t do anything, because He calls YOU to action. OK yeah I agree that He calls us to serve and love others, but I can’t do anything about what I can’t see. Abuse happens in secret. In the dark. Away from eyes. And my gifts have never included observation.
The problem, too, is that the more I looked at others and compared myself to them the more dissatisfied and almost frantic I’d become. Personally I didn’t measure up. So as I realized I was never going to be extraordinary I began to look toward my kids to be extraordinary. I DO NOT want them to live lives that are ordinary, lives that are held back by fear or lack of motivation. I am determined that they will be extraordinary and when they fall short I get angry and disappointed. They can’t see that every time they don’t push through or miss an opportunity because of fear or laziness or willfulness their chances at becoming extraordinary diminish. Because I know them genetically. Their genetic material, at the most fundamental level, is antisocial, reclusive, afraid, insecure, and does not want the weight of responsibility. I want them to fight their genetic and environmental pre-dispositions and create those opportunities and seize those moments that will keep them from growing up to be someone they’ll regret.
Lord, I regret who I am. Please, please, please don’t let them grow up to regret the chances they missed and are still too afraid to take. There’s a whole world out there and there are no boundaries. Lord, You can take them anywhere to do anything. They can be extraordinary and I want that for them SO badly. It is the thing that keeps me up at night and the thing that gives me the most anxiety. It’s the thing that when my husband, who knows me so well, asks me what’s wrong THAT’S what’s wrong. I’m either thinking about how I’ve fallen short or worrying that they will. How do I say that though? It’s messed up, Lord, this entire way of thinking. Please help me to overcome this and help me to free my kids and my husband and myself to live lives that are full without impossible expectations. That are within the scope of what You want for them. Help me to make peace with the choices I’ve made and help me to see that somehow, maybe, I’ve done something extraordinary. Something pleasing to You. Something that matters. That I haven’t missed Your perfect will for me entirely and that I haven’t dishonored what You created us to be capable of. I don’t want to be the Ferrari driving the speed limit. And I don’t want that for my kids either. Lord, I don’t know what to ask for, so I’m asking that You help me to see Your truth. Help me to see myself, my kids, and my husband through Your eyes. Help me trust You to take my kids down the paths that You want for them and to understand that if they are in Your will that they ARE extraordinary. That my husband has a heart for service and others and leadership and he is most certainly extraordinary. Help me to SEE. Give me a a renewed truth and reality that is YOURS. Help me to understand that in our fallen state we will never peg out at the full capacity of what You created in us, modeled after Your image. Help me to really grasp that and believe it and apply it.
Amen.
Five Dog Bend 