Not Waterproof

No one has ever told me I'm a natural. At anything. If I've achieved anything in my life it's come through a certain amount of hard work and doggedness. But even when I've given it all I've got, I've been an A-minus student, B-relay anchor, and barely-above-average human being. Somehow "A for effort" has never satisfied.

I remember a time I spent weeks hunting for the perfect dress for a wedding I was attending as a guest, only to overhear some girls disparaging my appearance in the bathroom during the event. Another time I was kayaking alone on a lake in Florida, and some fishermen who idled by me in a motor boat called out, "you look like you're working too hard!" Perhaps these are superficial examples, but that I remember them is a testament to how I still wish I could accomplish things with effortless grace. I've yet to catch on to the trick of making life look easy. I struggle to accept that my absolute best is far from perfect.

Of course, I recognize life is hard, we are all flawed, and that we desperately need a Savior. Recently though, I've had to come to terms with the fact that the Heavenly Father is going to keep on reminding me how hard, how flawed, and how desperately. The past few years I've found myself in countless situations that have really been pressing my perfectionism buttons. My hopeful visions of myself as a wife, international student, friend and leader are far from the reality of me in the here and now.

A few months ago I met with an American woman who was speaking at conference James and I attended. She told me she thinks I've confused love with admiration. "It sounds like you'd rather have others' admiration than love. Love doesn't require perfection. In fact, Christ's forgiveness requires us to admit we're incapable of it! Why would you prefer to be a porcelain doll on a shelf? Don't you know a baby that eats, cries, poops and pees is incomparably more valuable?"

She's right of course. But with the fragments of my porcelain head scattered about my feet, it's hard to shrug off the feelings of discouragement. I forget that I can't please God, and that any effort to is in vain.

Sometimes when I listen to Tracy Bonham's song "Whether You Fall" I can't help feeling she's singing to me. Her lyrics are beautiful and capture my feelings of failure:

Whether You Fall

by Tracy Bonham

whether it's the sunshine

whether it's the rain

doesn't make a difference

'til you complain

whether it's the water

comin' in from the roof

does it piss you off

that you're not waterproof?

whether you fall

means nothing at all

it's whether you get up

it's whether you get up

and you hate the silence

as it fills up the room

and there's not much to say

to your blushing groom

maybe all eyes are on you

as you finish the race

and the world sees you struggling

for last place

whether you fall

means nothing at all

it's whether you get up

it's whether you get up

If the groom is Christ, and the race is the Christian life, then yes, I'm pissed off that I'm not waterproof.

So every day I ask God to help me to die to myself and live more wholly in Him. I'm trying to rest in His arms and not see my failures and flaws as disabling, but to look to Christ and be awed and filled by His power, love, and grace. I desperately want to walk closely with God and demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit. In weak, broken, messy failure, I give up and give in. Let me be the dirty, smelly, whiny, imperfect baby who is loved by God.

"But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 CORINTHIANS 11:28

"Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 3:12-14"