Unacceptable

I’ve lived my life believing I’ve never quite hit the mark. No matter what I do, it is never quite enough. In school, it was expected that I would get high marks. I feared getting a C. When a paper I’d written came back with a bunch of red marks, my heart sank. I put most of this pressure on myself. The fear of failure plagued me. In my head I began to see failure as a great teacher, but in my heart, I feared it and did everything in my power to aviod failing.

There was a great chasim of “yes, buts” in my life. Yes I offered to help, but I could do more. Yes, I was leading, but I needed to right a wrong, do justice, have more mercy. Recently, I offered to pray with my wife during one of the darkest moments of my life and did. It was well received but with a request. “Could I pray before the disclosure tomorrow.” I once again felt the twinge of inadequacy. I should do more.

This feeling that I don’t have what it takes to live through life’s problems fuels my addiction. I run to the euphoric state initiated by my drug to mask my feeling of inadequacy, to minimize the pain. I know now, that is why leadership is so hard for me and why opportunities for me to be a leader are not sustainable. I am powerless in the paucity of my abilities. When I receive feedback, it tramps me down instead of providing an opportunity for me to improve. When someone suggests another step, I freeze in my tracks. If I feel trapped, I become angry.

The way out seems to be to trust who I am. I am who God made me to be. I came to grips with this in a previous post. Yet, at times, I am still plagued by feelings of inadequacy. To be who God made me to be is freeing, but there are also constraints. Obviously, I can’t be someone else. My unique strengths and weaknesses, gifts and abilities, are what I need to accomplish the work God has given me to do. He makes known to me the path of life that I have the opportunity to follow if I choose to do so. I can take each step confidently because I am who I am. In God’s eyes, that is sufficient.