On doing enough

I am the kind of person who perpetually feels they are never doing enough. (Mostly because it's just accurate.) 

With my clients--I see some of my colleagues providing far more release coordination support than I do, or are enduringly picky about small formatting or stylistic errors, or enthusiastically assent to client requests for tangential advocacy, things I feel I do not have the bandwidth for, and I worry I am wrong for that. 

With my kid--I let him look at screens, I let him eat sugar, ( I let him eat dirt!), I am inconsistent in my application of my chosen discipline method, I have him in daycare, and the older he gets the more I am overwhelmed by the volume of things I have not yet taught him. 

With my husband--I always click into the threads in my due date group polling women on how often they are having sex with their partners, looking for reassurance that my lack of libido isn't inflicting cruel and unusual deprivation of my sweet, uncomplaining husband. 

With my ideals--a friend asked me recently if I was an environmentalist, and, you know, I do really want to be, but making choices that steward the earth is a complicated and nuanced task. Yes, I use a bamboo toothbrush, but sometimes I also just really need to use a Ziploc bag. 

With my faith--ohhh, but this is tricky one. What is the interplay between our commitment to growth and reliance on the Holy Spirit to catalyze that growth in our lives? Grace does not mean we are free to live mindlessly and without discipline, but also, His burden is easy and His yoke is light. 

There is a furniture flipper I follow who likes says, "If we're not doing the most, what are we doing?" I heard her voice in my head as I twice sanded the cabinet doors I was refinishing, hoping and praying that this was not empty labor and would actually make the finish nicer. (But also, let's be honest, this is a lipstick on a pig situation.) 

But this is where nothing is a greater encouragement to me than my faith. The Pharisee prays in front of the synagogue, "Lord, thank you that I have done better than all of these people," while the tax collector prays in the back of the synagogue, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner." And who is justified? Those of us who are humble, who are empty, who grieve that we have not done enough, who accept that we could never do enough. 

God gives a glimpse of how right and just and bright and good and kind and free the world could be. And it is good and right to have a hunger for that world. But attaining it does not rest solely on our shoulders. If it did, how could I get out of bed in the morning, how could I look myself in the mirror, knowing I am not doing enough? 

And so I pray, "Give me the desire and ability to do the most in You," trusting in the mystical power of a God who restores in ways that are slow to me, invisible to me, confusing to me, but He is always doing more than enough, and that is enough for me. 

I thought the deluge of friends leaving the faith might slow down in my thirties, but it has not. Whereas in my twenties I felt a conviction that many of these souls would return after some time in the desert, in my thirties I am less sure. 

I don't wish to generalize about people's reasons for leaving. There are many. They are painful. I think I can even say they are legitimate. It is a little bit like hearing about your friend's divorce; you don't wish it for them, but when it happens, it is not your job to comment on how it happened, only to comfort. (Also like hearing about your friend's divorce, privately you look at your own life and wonder, will it happen to me?) 

One of my favorite praise songs when I was a youth was Hillsong's "None But Jesus." It echos the sentiment of Peter in John 6:68, a verse that has been my source of faith for many years, "To whom shall we go? Only You have the words of life." Truthfully, I don't usually enjoy the worship sets at the church we attend, but I was surprised this Sunday when we sang "None But Jesus" and the corporate participation brought me to tears. 

Singing that song I remembered praise nights in the sanctuary of my church growing up, I remembered kneeling at a wooden cross at the YWAM base in San Francisco, I remembered lifting hands in a stadium of 16,000 other people at Urbana, I remembered crying myself to sleep in my bed as a teen. So many flashes of what my faith meant to me then, and how Jesus was near to my heart. 

For many of my peers who have since let go of their faith, these kinds of flashbacks are bitter for them. Things look different for them looking back without the filter of faith. They remember feeling controlled, manipulated. The words are dry. The music is parched. I can understand a little, I think, because I have had seasons where I have felt something similar. 

But in that moment, for me, I was struck by what a gift it is to have these memories to minister to my heart. The investments of my parents, my youth leaders, ministry leaders, prayer warriors, my own investments, they were deposits in my bank of faith that are continuing to nourish my heart in times of sadness, frustration, and distance. What mercy this is!