Everybody Drops Stuff

When I was about twelve, I went on a charitable mission with the Girl Scouts. We brought Thanksgiving food to a family in the poorest of poor neighborhoods. Their dirty house made all of us uncomfortable, but we each stood up a little straighter, determined to “bear our cross,” because, quite simply, we were “better” than these people, and it was our duty to help them.

Before we left, the adult son of the family, who was severely mentally disabled, prayed with us. We prayed our middle-class, “family pew at the Baptist church” prayers; and then this man prayed. We understood not a word he said, because his disability made speech very difficult for him.

Even at twelve, I was a little ashamed. What if, I thought, this man’s very sincere prayer pierced the heart of God far more deeply than any of our pharisaical words ever could?

And then, like a typical human being, I threw the thought away; felt pleased with myself, like a well-groomed cat, for my charitable heart; and went back to focusing on being the best me I could be.

I led a charmed life: top of my class, full scholarships, talented in so many areas, winning writing and art contests left and right with about 2% effort. I was healthy, pretty, slender, funny, friendly, ambitious, made for leadership, honest and full of integrity. Bosses begged me to stay and work for them; teachers and professors showed my work to colleagues; I smashed tests and projects and papers. I went running, hardcore, in the southern heat, and was admired by my friends for my ability to balance work, school, fitness, social life, and hobbies so nonchalantly. I pretended to be humble about it, but inside I glowed with their praise. That’s right, I thought, I’m different from everybody else. I am more special. And because of this, my existence has value.

In spite of all this, I dreamed of more. I could just see it: the perfect “me.” Popular, brilliant, well-loved, patient and kind and always smooth, never awkward--everybody’s favorite. And that’s what I strived for. Accomplishment wasn’t enough. I wanted the whole world to love me.

Popular culture as well as Christian culture fueled my ego, and right alongside that, my self-destructive habits of thought. Unfortunately, these two cultures work hand in hand in many areas. And one thing they agree wholeheartedly about is this: that we must all strive to be the “best we can be.” (Just ask Oprah, with her “live your best life” campaign.)  Christians in the western world tend to be little more than scientologists: we believe we are in control, that circumstances can be manipulated to suit us. You know, the American Dream. If you make it big, it’s because you worked hard. If you don’t, it’s because there’s something inherently wrong with you. Anybody else could have done it, right?

In this economy, there are dozens of versions of yourself, but you must work hard to improve yourself so that you can be the best version of you. It’s like living in a house of mirrors: everywhere you turn, there’s another delusion to distort your perfect image of yourself. ALWAYS something that we are “working on.” And always, always before us, that proverbial carrot, dangling teasingly but never reached: our own idea of what the “perfect me” would look like. And the closer we get, the more frustrated we become. The haunting image of catastrophic failure looms after every social misstep, every bumbled word, every little mistake at work and home. You can “have it all”--and you’re expected to, inside and out.

It’s an illusion.

Growth is good. But the thing about growth is that it cannot be contrived. “Consider the lilies of the field,” Jesus said. A flower doesn’t try to be an oak tree. It doesn’t even try to be a flower. It just is--because of a process outside of itself that it cannot control, a process that requires many factors that somehow work together in divine orchestration--against an insanity of odds. It’s an everyday, millions-multiplied miracle. A seed doesn’t know what a flower looks like.  And I’d imagine it’s not sitting there hankering and straining after something it thinks it ought to be.

If it were, if it had any clue what it wanted to be--it would stay a seed.

I don’t mean to sound like a hippie transcendentalist. But just think about it. The self-improvement industry is a billion-dollar hoax. Don’t you think if you could improve yourself, you wouldn’t need a book about it? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

I’m not saying there’s no such thing as good advice, or value in working through your issues. But the goal of all that stuff shouldn’t be to become some version of us that we are pleased with, that everybody likes, that is “better” than who we currently are.

Maybe you don’t do that. Maybe it’s just me. But I think we are a culture of believers and non-believers alike who are wildly and passionately expending energy under the pressure of ideals that are not real. In other words, we’re spinning wheels and getting nowhere, because the “where” we’re trying to get to isn’t the point.

That’s how my life--my charmed, accomplished life--became a comparison game. Internally I seethed with self-hatred. I wasn’t perfect. I was responsible for everything, and everything was my fault. Comparison games are sick, and they are games that you will never, ever, ever win. They are basically Hunger Games for the soul.

A week or two ago, the power went out at my house on a Friday night. Instantly, I felt inadequate to solve the problem. I had never called the power company before. I had probably chosen the wrong company anyway. The storm that interfered with my power lines was probably my fault, too. Internally, I began to blame myself for everything: why can’t you be more knowledgeable? More responsible? More grown-up? If you weren’t you, none of this would have ever happened.

I know it’s ridiculous, but it didn’t seem so to my subconsciousness on a Friday night at 10 p.m.

As I fumbled for my phone and flashlight in the dark, I knocked a bottle of nice O.P.I. nail polish off my nightstand. (Those who paint their nails will appreciate what a crisis this was. That stuff is expensive!) It broke and got sparkly glitter all over the floor. Gosh, you’re so stupid. Why didn’t you just put that away when you were done with it? Then it wouldn’t have been there. You’re so disorganized. If everybody knew how much of a wreck you were, they would never like you. Now your cat is probably going to step in this and cut her foot and it’s going to be YOUR FAULT.

Your fault. Those words have echoed in sinister whispers to me my whole life. Because, see, if you can contrive to be a perfect version of yourself--you can also become the worst version. You think you’re in control of the whole shebang. It’s a battle, constantly, between your image of the best of yourself and the worst of yourself.

I’ll stop and add a side-note that I struggle with OCD. The chemical imbalances of OCD leave you terrified of what you could do wrong to hurt other people and destroy yourself. Your fault. The responsibility of the whole world falls on your shoulders, just like Atlas who longed for just a moment of relief.

OCD is a real brain disorder, but it’s just an extreme version of what every human deals with every day. The comparison games. The control issues. The perfectionism. Most people have these problems buried deep beneath seeming sanity. It took a moment of insanity to expose to me that I really did have a problem. And that problem was the belief that I was only valuable if I were special, more accomplished than others, and loved by everyone.

I thought, frankly, that the Bible was naive when it said God loved everybody. Sure, He loves everybody, I thought--but who cares? I want to be perfect. And it had to be my perfect--my image of the perfect me.

When I was punched in the face with my own inadequacy, I was brought to my knees in more ways than one.

Then, a pastor asked a provoking question: “What is your idea of success? Like, not the world’s, and not God’s, but yours?”

I had to answer honestly. The ultimate goal of my life was to become this perfect version of myself (however it was I was imagining it), and when I did, the whole world would be in love with me.

In that moment, I realized that the reason I’d been frustrated my whole life was because I thought I was living “for God,” but really inside I was pursuing those other motivations. It all became as clear. My desires were so sacreligious that I should have been burned at the stake.

“But still He gives more grace” (James 4:6).

So when I dropped the nail polish and beat myself up mercilessly about it, I realized that I had been doing that to myself all my life: taking responsibility for everything, and thinking I was going to be punished for imperfection--I guess with power outages. (I don’t know. None of it made sense in the light--or literal lack thereof, in this case.) My friend Ashley told me, “Everybody drops stuff.” But I didn’t want to be Everybody--this nameless body of people who made mistakes. Everybody had imperfections. But if I were Everybody, I would be Somebody different: Somebody whose mistakes had drastic consequences. I was terrified.

But John said this: Perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us (1 John 4:18-19). He also said, When our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart (1 John 3:20).

Poor John. He was an old man on the Isle of Patmos, seemingly a big fat failure, trying to put into words the grace and the love of Christ over a people who were chasing the wrong things. God bless him. We still didn’t get it. Granted, his writing is pretty circular and confusing. But he was trying to express something on the tip of his tongue that is nearly inexpressible.

I’m not saying we’re all just big fat fails. Nor am I saying we shouldn’t work on our issues, or that we should run around sinning at every opportunity. I’m simply saying that we don’t see the whole picture. And because of that, our perspective, the way we interpret the events of our lives, the worldview that we try to fit everything (and everyone) into--they’re all a bit skewed. Or a lot skewed.

It’s not a behavior issue but a perspective issue.

Last night, I got gussied up in my finest clothing and looked like a million bucks. I went to a birthday party and then swing dancing. But I had to leave because my head was throbbing. When I got home, I threw up all the pain reliever I took. I vomited until I was staring into a toilet bowl full of yellow slime from the pit of my stomach (TMI, but this is where it gets real). And still my head would not leave me alone. I tried to think about what I could have done or eaten to bring this headache on. How was it my fault? What inadequacy in me caused my misfortune? Ever since the nail polish revelation, I throw these thoughts away, but they still occur to me.

As I lay in my bed, helpless and frustrated, with my head trying to complete a self-destruct mission, a revelation popped into that twilight zone of almost-asleep:

What if it doesn’t matter?

What if I’m just as lovely to God right now, helpless and in pain and puking my guts out, as I would be on the mission field, saving babies’ lives and spreading the gospel? What if I’m always inhibited by imperfections--roadblocks, illnesses, things that delay the wonderful plans of action I have for making myself accomplished in the kingdom? What if I never do anything spectacular for God? What if I am not as wonderful and accomplished as everyone told me I was my whole life?

What if….just what if….I never become that perfect image of me that I idolized?

What if it’s not about ME at all?

My whole life, I “trusted” God because I thought He was going to give me a better version of me. But maybe that’s not His game. Maybe He doesn’t even have a game. His thoughts are not our thoughts, you know.

What if I simply received His love and let it transform me, like a lily of the field--and worry about it about as much as a seed?

In that moment, I realized that I didn’t care about anything anymore--just Jesus. And that’s not the end. That’s the beginning.

He instructed us to love others and to spread the gospel, yes. We are meant to have good character, yes. We are made for big and divine plans, plans to change the world--yes, yes, yes.

But if these things are what we are living for, we will be a frustrated people. If we try with all our might to become an idea we created, we are destined to failure, the empty ruins of religion, and the bitterness of disappointing our own fickle, incomplete imaginations.

I’m not saying that none of that matters….but I’m saying that none of that matters.

Some of you are offended by this. Still others are thinking, “It took her this long to realize it?” Some of you are saying, “I have no clue what this girl is talking about.” It’s all been as unintelligible to you as that young man’s prayer was to me so many years ago.

He was nothing. He lived nowhere. He could do nothing. He was as helpless as a girl in the bed with a migraine. But from twelve to twenty-nine, I’ve found a different way to see him. I’ve reconciled what made me so uncomfortable so many years ago. I wanted to be different from him.

But you see, I’m not.

We are all helpless. We are all inadequate. We are never going to be perfect. I’m never going to be charming and graceful “like other people.” Every single person in the world isn’t going to fall in love with me.

And that’s ok. It doesn’t even matter.

This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3). I don’t get that...I’ve been reading it over and over. And yet I do get it--in the same way I understood that young man’s wordless prayer years ago.

That’s what matters. And honestly, it’s a big relief. The weight of the world is not on our shoulders--it’s on His, where it always really was, and always will be.

Just take it from me, “the girl who was perfect”: perfection is a cruel master. But there is One who isn’t.