forgetting

most mornings i wake up with a determined sense that "i've got to get stuff done today." as though somehow my agenda can reshape all the ways in which the things i did wrong yesterday can be made right today... but it seems like the harder i try, the worse it gets.

the more i think about it, the worse i think most religions are at having something to say to the loser. i mean what happens when you lose? what happens when your best isn't good enough? when your cancer isn't going to recede? when your father just won't love you? when your wife knows you're a failure as a husband?

most everyone in the world you'd go to for advice under any of those circumstances offers a cursory set of solutions:

"just keep trying"
"just hold on, it will get better"
"it's not that bad"
"let's come up with a plan of action"

but what if you're really at the end of your rope? i know i've been there. when you're at the end of your rope, there's nothing a motivational speech is really gonna do. you might reluctantly coax yourself to get out of bed, but in your heart, you know that that the pain of your shame from failure or the pain of life's sometimes horrible realities can become insufferable. if you wait long enough, maybe you'll forget, but that's certainly not a stable reality.

i realize that lately, i've been under attack. i have been taking for granted that since i might understand intellectually some (though certainly NOT all) of the things going on in my heart, that i have them "under control." those are demons that since i've "brought to light," i "don't need to worry about anymore."

but, of course, that simply isn't true... i'm really under attack. i feel pressure to perform at every level in my life -- to be a good husband, to be a good caretaker for my firm, to be a good father, to serve the church, to scribble on this blog... to be good.

but i'm not good. i'm a failure. and i KNOW it and no stupid aphorism about "trying harder" will sedate the pain of my heart from understanding that.

Christianity has something to say me. the message of the gospel begins well before i would have started my measurements for a self-assessment test. Christianity starts with the basic supposition that

1. i've already failed.
2. Trying is evidence of my failure.

see when i forget that i already failed, i try harder... i think i have to do something to "make things better." but no human can do that... i mean PRACTICALLY, of course i can do little things, but the big things in life -- where will i work, will i get sick, will my family be ok... the things that MATTER and give shape to life... all those things are well beyond my control. so i try to ignore them and "focus on the things i can control." but even those things aren't really under my control and so because i spend all my time focusing on the uncontrollables that i THINK i can control, i wind up half crazy and totally discouraged.

God's standard across everything is perfection. It is that simple. It is not a half-measure. it is not just being "better than the other 99%" It is perfect.

I keep forgetting that. i keep thinking that i haven't really failed. that each day is a new slate and that trying harder will fix something. but the ARROGANCE of that presumption is all the evidence God needs to condemn me... who am i to challenge God? who am I to challenge his standards? they are absolute, not relative. i have no hope to meet any of them. what a pathetic little pion i am to even try to do it on my own.

Christianity actually STARTS with the message that our failure is real and concrete. life's agonies are undeniable and shouldn't be surprising in a broken world with broken people... life is hard.

i think richard rohr puts it best actualy:

"Understanding that your life is not about you is the connection point with everything else. it lowers the mountains and fills the valley that we have created... I am grateful to be a part -- and only a part! i do not have to figure it all out, straight it all out, or even do it perfectly by myself. i do not have to be God. It is an enormous weight off your back."

so i confess. i forgot this morning. i forgot that i'd already failed, before i even began... that i fall short of God's standard... that i'm in desperate need of His grace. that when i woke up today, it wasn't my "goal" to love God, but to "use" him to serve my own ideas about what will make "me better" or the "world better" or whatever idiot scheme i had in mind. i let the world's demands and demons... the world's ridiculous and ephemeral and changing standards be my benchmark and not God's. I am sorry.

please pray for this peccator. God, I ask you to help me engage in community, to seek out and confess all that nags at my heart, to give my life into Your hands. I ask you help me to do nothing but through your strength. Help my life be a simple testimony to two certain facts 1) my inadequacy and 2) your unending grace. What can I really be hoping for if not greater commune with you? How miserable and insufficient any other desire would be...

CPP