I’m a bit of a skilled Christian. I’ve spent much of my life in the secret place, working to perfect myself. Outside of the fact that the more you spend time with God, the more like Him you become, there were other reasons why I was there, chiseling myself and my character. I don’t think I was really given space to be imperfect, whatever that meant, at any given moment. I was never allowed to be immature or the “smaller person”. I’m not even sure I was allowed to dwell on negative things – I had to quickly pick myself up and move on because remaining in negative emotions meant I was ungrateful.
What made it worse was my struggle with human relationships. I’m very good at making myself small enough to fit, perfect enough never to miss a spot.
My fear is that one day, I’ll snap—and that I’ll lose my credibility. No one will remember my endless patience, painful selflessness, and continual silence, and God knows what else.
A great example of this is my previous living situation, which turned a bit sour or became difficult at some point. It was scary to me because it was all I could do to keep myself together emotionally in the midst of it – to keep my slate clean, simply put. I was terrified that I would snap in one way or another and that it would give someone the upper hand to turn a challenging situation against me when I already felt like I didn’t have much space to feel what I was feeling.
I don’t know what it would look like to have another human being witness the human side of me. I’m used to emulating grace, and mercy, presenting the perfected version of myself. I am used to presenting that to God too and struggling heavily with the idea of falling short of His mercy and grace, misrepresenting Him in public, or living outside of His will. It sometimes occurs to me that His mercy may not be enough for me, that I might be too bad for Him, or too much to fit in His hand. I am having to learn that He is enough.
This season, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, this is what I want to remember and what I hope you remember too. That God gave up His “one and only Son” (John 3:16) for me, that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). That means there’s nothing I could ever do to remove myself from His wing. I only have to show up as myself with a heart for Him, and that is perfect enough.
I want to pray for you: no matter the year you’ve had, this month may Jesus, who He is, and the weight of God’s love for you be at the forefront of your mind. I pray that your testimony is an understanding of the extent of His mercy, and I pray that you too experience a lifting of any lie that suggests that you do not fall under the umbrella of His grace. I hope that you remember that you are in the palms of His hands (Isaiah 49:16). Finally, “…I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).
