Good Enough

 Having to actively fight the perfectionist side of myself while I take these three classes is a true battle. I want the A. Gosh darnit, I want the A+. More than that, I want to know without a shadow of a doubt that I have given something my absolute best effort. "Good enough" is a really hard phrase for me, it's always felt like a cop-out, a failure, an excuse. 

Today, after spending five straight hours without a break on homework, I felt myself looking for a reason to justify taking a break. I honestly didn't want to because I wanted to accomplish more but I also felt this little niggling in my body telling me my brain was getting tired. I had just read a whole chapter of Anatomy & Physiology, listened to and taken notes from a lecture from that same course, completed two labs and a homework set, completed a chem lab and done a quiz for Medical Terminology. 

But no…I needed more to justify stopping. To let myself breathe. I had taken a five minute break for lunch but had only noticed it was lunchtime because my hands started to shake with low sugar issues.

Yikes. 

I thought I had outgrown my need for everything to be complete and perfect, but clearly the old demons die hard. I texted my husband what was obviously a desperate plea to my inner voice to just let myself rest for a few and he, in his wisdom after 22 years of experiencing my special brand of insanity, came out of his office, looked me in the eye and said "I can tell you are trying to fight the guilt of taking a break. It's ok to rest." 

In that moment, I instantly had a flashback to high school me on the night before a math final. The phone rang and my mother picked it up. It was my math teacher, urging her to make me stop studying and take me out for ice cream because he knew I was ready but would probably spend the whole night buried in math equations if someone didn't force a little break on me. I remember arguing with her. I honestly don't remember who won. 

These same demons that crop up in pretty much everything I try to accomplish tend to taint my spiritual life as well. The concepts of grace, of unconditional love, of sacrifice for me…they feel foreign, almost wrong somehow. Rules are easier. Measurable. Grace is unmerited, unearned, unfathomable. A clear 10 step plan to being a good Christian? Bring it on. Just resting in His love- HOW IN THE WORLD DO I DO THAT? 

I’m not alone in this struggle, I know other friends who tend in the same direction. To earn, to strive, to find their worth in what is attainable. But I also know that it is never enough. The A feels good, but it doesn’t truly fill that ache. It never can. That ache to be perfectly content in who the Lord has made me to be as I walk with Him. 

I mentioned in a recent post that I have been leaning into new rhythms to try to open up that side of me that needs to be able to just rest, sit, learn, accept the love of God. 

A book called “Breath As Prayer” by Jennifer Tucker has been a literal Godsend. The whole idea of the book is that our breath, our very being, is found in the Lord. So as we physically breathe, we use words straight from scripture to calm our minds even as the breathing calms our body. It’s rooted in both science and the Word (swoon!) and the author puts it like this: 

“Breath prayer can help calm your anxiety by connecting you to your Creator and aligning your breath to the rhythm of His grace. Anxiety makes us focus on ourselves and our feelings and the discomfort that those feelings and emotions are causing us. In breath prayer, we reorient our thoughts toward Christ and He becomes the center of our focus, not our feelings.”  

Tomorrow, I’ll need to study again. I have a test coming up. I can already feel my body ramping up…flashcards to be created and studied, careful reading through my notes, working through the study sheets. It will be easy to overwhelm myself with the stress of striving for that A+. Old habits die hard, after all. It will be hard to shut off that inner voice that says "try harder, work longer, you are not doing enough". That voice is loud and powerful, after all.

But, I’m heading into it with this prayer from the book in mind: 

It's not magic and it's not perfect. But even taking tiny steps to learn to pause, to feel the heart racing with the need to achieve, to earn...and to then learn to pause, feel it and inhale and exhale truth and literal, life-giving oxygen, is huge.

Not easy, but huge.

And maybe, in that breathing, I'll be able to realize that what I have accomplished is good enough. That the Lord is pleased. That I can stop. That I can rest. Because who I am is NOT rooted in what I was able to do that day.

No Resolutions, Just Rhythms

It's easy this time of year to fall into the "dream big, make resolutions, change everything" trap, isn't it?  American culture tells us we get a new beginning, to choose our happy, to put ourselves first and make this OUR year. And for many of us, the prospect of NEW is enchanting. Particularly after years of Covid and culture wars and the challenges of parenting and putting the time we need to into our marriages, our jobs, our friendships, our kids.

It can be so tempting to try to warp the gospel to fit into that narrative that says if I make myself healthy, everything else will fit into place.

For a number of years I have LONGED for something to change. To not be so exhausted and chaotic and to stop operating in survival mode with our challenges.

But just this past year, I really sat down and asked the Lord why I was so tired. Why my scripture time was so empty. Why I didn't really want to pray. Why I felt exhausted and disheartened and, frankly, abandoned in our journey to help our two younger sons recover their own health.

And one day on a run, it came to me.

God hadn't changed, but I had.

I was trying to connect with the Lord the same way I did when I was 23. Before marriage. Before three children. Before a mortgage and the pressures of navigating medically complex kids, before my own struggle set in with PMDD, before miscarriage and infertility and two cross-country moves and family deaths....and...all the things that happen in 20 years of living life.

I had grown and changed and, with that, my needs and my rhythms for how and when to spend time with God had changed. I was so busy keeping to what I thought I knew to do that I ended up making God into my own image, an easy checklist, an empty to-do.

So I stepped back. It wasn't January. It wasn't when we are told to start new, dream big, change ourselves. It was a still, quiet morning when my body was tired and I just told God I missed Him. That I needed a new way, a new perspective, new habits and rhythms that match where I am as a 44 year-old mother, wife and coach pursuing a late-decided career in medicine. With all my wrinkles and scars and wounds and, yes, my resurrected places, too.

I can tell you confidently that God met me in that. I stopped trying to force a "quiet time" at an hour of the day that just didn't work with my family's rhythms. I leaned into new spiritual practices that I hadn't traditionally connected with, like breath prayers and stillness. I let the Lord into the grief in my life and learned how to breathe and process it and run less on rage and chaos and more on peace and hope and mindfulness.

That, my friends, is what a new year looks like. Not some big extravagant promise to change myself, but the quiet surrender to let God change me.

It's slow. It's up and down. But it's good. So when January hit six days ago, it wasn't much. Just another day that I woke up and tried to embrace that same new posture of surrender. The new rhythms, new breaths, new prayers, new hopes.

It's not easy to undo decades of perspective and practice, but it's sure worth it to try.

Blessings to each of you as we set off into 2023, full of whatever it will bring. Let us mark it with honesty, integrity and letting the Lord continue to mold us into who he has created us to be, not into what we can make ourselves apart from him.