When You Can't Be Good Enough

While I know that there are people out there who don't like me, it's always jarring to have them confront me to my face. Knowing and hearing are two different things. So recently, reading a negative response to my story, was a bit like an electric jolt to my ego. Or maybe the opposite of an electric jolt. Perhaps something like biting into an apple only to find that it's rotten. Something a lot like that.

I processed as this reader complained. That it was all ridiculous, berating me for not leaving my pants at my ankles and accepting the shame. And I wish I could tell you it didn't eat me up right away. And they asked, How can we sugar coat this and say it's encouraging? They asked — how can Christians keep doing stuff like this?

I rolled my eyes. And then I cried. And then I got angry before chewing on the words, and spitting them out because most of them were garbage and something was missing. I rambled about this to a friend and she said, "I wish you could tell them about where you were in life and WHY it happened," and though my friend meant well, I didn't want to defend myself. 

Defending myself does nothing, I say. How do I show this person the Gospel? Because I could ignore this, and maybe that's the best response. Let it go and move on because where there's one, there a hundred others, and no one likes poking an ant's nest.

But in starting to ignore it, I felt like maybe I had one chance to say just one thing, and then next time, I'll ignore it. Maybe I won't even finish reading the comment at all next time.

So here's what I'd want to say to that reader:

Dear stranger, 

Hi. I don't know you. Or maybe I do. Maybe I see you every Sunday and we exchange casual greetings. Maybe you're thousands of miles away and only know me through these black and white letters on a screen. Maybe we'd enjoy a meal of bread and wine together and laugh about the same jokes and cry over the same movies.

So, hello.

I'm so sorry that you are disappointed in Christians. In me. In the whole mess of the world that keeps happening and keeps turning and keeps falling apart all over again.

Can I just bend your ear for a moment, and ask if perhaps you missed something in my story? 

I'm not trying to sugar coat what I've done in my life. But I will say this — I've learned the Gospel and message of Jesus Christ is not for the people who figure out how to get it all together. The message of the Cross isn't that we finally got our lives in order and we're not all a total mess anymore. The message of the Cross is sweet to our bitter souls, and that's the only sugarcoating that's happening here.

Jesus came for the people who can't get it together. For the people who keep disappointing people. For the people who are caught with their pants down and dragged into the streets. We are the sick ones. We are the prodigals. We are the Israelites wandering and complaining, doubting and hoarding what's not ours to keep.

I don't wish to sugar coat anything. But instead, wish to point you to the sweet message of the Gospel. That is the only sugarcoating I provide. That over all of this rotten aftertaste, Jesus still chose to love us and die for us. Even the Bible says that "God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." While adulterers are unzipping their pants, and addicts are tying the tourniquets, while the trigger is pulled or the words are thrown like darts into the heart of another person, and while we idolize our belongings and gorge on our feasting tables while thousands die every day from disease, malnutrition and abandonment, he STILL chose to love and die. STILL. EVEN THEN.

Believers will let you down. Every single day until we're home in Heaven, we are all works in progress. Sanctification is both done and in progress. We are a holy and chosen people, and still a people who are desperately hoping today will be the day that we get it through our thick skin and hardened hearts that we are saved from it all, and will finally walk in full freedom.

Jesus wouldn't be our physician if it didn't mean we were fatally sick. Last I checked, I'm not healthy. My only hope is Jesus. My only hope is that He died for me before I even knew that death was my penalty.

We are throwing ourselves at the mercy of the Cross, and putting faith in the work of Christ. Not our own works. Not our ability to say the right words, or even to make it all right in the end. Not our ability to understand and explain, or reason our way out of all of our bad decisions. I sin because I am a sinner, and there is no sugarcoating that. To expect anything different from me or my actions is a work of faith. If any good comes out of me, it's because something in me is miraculously not blackening or spoiling in the heat of separation in this world. Anything good in me is a work of the cross. 

So dear friend, who I may or may not know, the next time you're disappointed by someone in the faith, remember that they are an example of why ultimately the saving work of grace is so amazing. 

Lists and Belonging

I'm taking a one-day hiatus from the lists and posting over at Allume today. Won't you join me?

She always asks me, “You and me forever, right mom?” I assure her that yes, indeed, it’s me and her, forever.

We all want to belong to someone, don’t we?

It’s easy as a single parent to sometimes feel like I belong to no one. My daughter, she’s at home in my heart. But me? I feel the loneliness creep in with a heavy silence, long after the child’s play and songs have gone quiet into the night.

Confession: I snuck out of church a few weeks ago. I stepped off stage from leading worship, and when all greetings stopped, all backs were turned and all eyes were looking forward, I took my exit to the door and found a brick wall on which to sit. Sometimes I can’t handle all the couples coupling up. All the seats taken. All the places I feel unwanted or don’t belong. Sometimes it all feels a lot worse than it actually is, and when it does, I need to get fresh air and clear my head.

And it was that kind of morning

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On the Bad Days

"Do you ever feel you've become the worst version of yourself?" Joe Fox types out to Kathleen Kelly. "That a Pandora's box of all the secret, hateful parts - your arrogance, your spite, your condescension - has sprung open? Someone upsets you and instead of smiling and moving on, you zing them? "Hello, it's Mr Nasty." I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about."

Yes, I'm quoting a movie but it's all that's running through my head as I revisit moments where I'm less than proud of myself.

My first response is usually, "Next time, Andrea, do better than that." And then something far more haunting, far more real, sinks in and says, "You can't."

I, like most people in this world, like to put my best foot forward, even at the expense of transparency and honesty sometimes. I will deny, hide, stuff, cover, sugar coat, avoid and sidestep until the only perception you have of me is a happy, carefree, conquering, successful one.

Until the day it all comes crashing down. And the thin chassis around me shatters at the slightest pin prick, and suddenly, I am nothing that I wanted to be. I am the worst version of myself.

So what to do about this?

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10)

Here's the thing. As much as I want you to think the best of me, it's not about what you think. It's about who I actually am. And who I am is a sinner still desperately in need of a God who changes us from the inside out.

Reality is that most days I'm prone to nitpick at myself until I have gnawed my soul to the bone. I am dropping my gaze from the cross to my own hands. I'm trying my best to patch up holes and bubblegum stop leaks on a sewage system that is teeming with nothing but sin, and stench, and everything ugly I hoped I never would be.

Doesn't that sound lovely?

So today, I don't want you to think highly of me. If I am graceful, it's because of Christ's miracle work in my heart. If I am patient, it's a fruit of the Spirit who is renewing the right spirit within me. If I am gentle, kind, loving, peaceful, it's because somehow, by His grace, my gaze looked away from the mess long enough for the Spirit to actually get to work. The cross became my obsession more than I am my own obsession.

And when I can't seem to hold it all together, and you can't seem to hold it all together, let's agree to stop grasping at bandaids and sugar spoons, and let's look up. The gift of the Gospel is not something that we created by fixing ourselves. Why is it that I think the continued gift of Grace is something that I have to perfect in myself as well?

Galatians 3:3 —"Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Tullian Tchividjian talks about this "spiritualized navel-gazing" and I'm guilty of this form of Christianized narcissism. I'm still obsessed with myself, how I'm doing, how to fix it, how to make it better.

And quite honestly, it's exhausting and that's not why I believe the Gospel. I don't believe in Grace because it makes me a more holy version of a narcissist. I believe in the Gospel because it lifts my chin up completely away from myself to look at the cross, and says, "You can stop trying to make it all better now." And I lean in to the finished work of Christ, repent of my absolute self-obsession, and whisper gratitude that He is patient, constant, and faithful to complete the work that He began.

I Am 11 Again

I was never picked last for teams in gym class. I was never picked first either. I was somewhere in the middle. After all the fast, athletic kids were picked, I was called because I wasn't bad at sports. I wasn't amazing, I wasn't awful. I was just average. You'd think stuff like that wouldn't affect me so much as a now 28 year old girl with a life of her own.

But it does.

Because really, I am most aware of all that doesn't measure up in me. Aren't we all? We are our own worst critics? Or rather, we imagine that everyone else is our worst critic, sizing us up in every way that we do or do not qualify.

Physically. (too tall, short, skinny, fat, brunette, blond, curly hair, straight hair, you name it.)
Personality. (Not funny, not talented enough, awkward, loud, annoying, apathetic, insecure.)
Situational (unemployed, in debt, divorced, single parent, too old, too young.)

I sometimes feel like I'm still standing against that matted blue gym wall wondering when all the sticks will be drawn and my name will come up next. In friendships. In career. In life.

A few months ago a friend and I were chatting about love and relationships and he confessed this about the guys he knew..."Truth is, a lot of guys think there is always someone smarter, prettier, younger, so it scares them to commit or fall in love at all." That stuck with me, mostly because it's every girl's worst nightmare. To hear those words aloud. But he went on to say that falling in love has less to do with those things, and more to do with the adventure that comes after you commit to someone. "That's where the story is," he said.

And I'm back listening to all the names called ahead of me realizing it's true. There is always going to be someone smarter, more talented, better looking, younger, funnier, fill-in-the-blank more than me.

Who knew grade school was such a reflection of "real life"?

As a single parent, I fear the disqualifications. Wring my hands over them. Expect them, even. And I'm not solely talking about relationships here. I'm talking about the things I won't get invited too, because I'll have my daughter. The opportunities I have to turn down, because I am a mother first. The boxes I have to climb out from, the labels I'm ripping off, because people/friends/well-intended strangers think they know what life looks like for me from this side of things.

And can I just say... I'm tired of feeling like I don't measure up.

And honestly, it's completely anti-gospel.

{Hello root of my problem.}

What it comes down to is I honestly don't believe that because of Christ,
I am complete,
qualified,
enough,
accepted.

In me there is still this thing that craves hearing it from someone else's mouth. That yearns for the early draw, to be on someone's team, to not be left standing knocking my heels together with the leftovers.

I just don't believe it, as much as I want to think I do. Doubt seeps deep into my bones, so familiar that I don't even recognize it as something wrong anymore. I'm familiar with it. I know how to speak its language, and make it sound less than what it is...

Disbelief. My sin nature once again running my heart ragged on some treadmill that I really need to discard.

I don't know how to drain myself of this pernicious rot. Other than pray for Grace. For eyes to see and a heart to understand the good news of the Gospel.

Maybe then one day I'll mentally walk out of that grade school gym all together, leaving those teams and straw-drawing days behind me.

"And Grace calls out: you are not just a disillusioned old man who may die soon, a middle-aged woman stuck in a job and desperately wanting to get out, a young person feeling the fire in the belly begin to grow cold. You may be insecure, inadequate, mistaken, or potbellied. Death, panic, depression, and disillusionment may be near you. But you are not just that. You are accepted. Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted." — Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel