The Freedom of Embracing Your Limitations
For the past couple of weeks, I have felt like I'm in a season where God is continuously sending me the same message through different outlets. Those kinds of seasons are always fun for me because it's like a treasure hunt--with each new thing I read or observe, He reveals a new layer of the point He's trying to make. Sometimes, that is less of a theological lesson and more of a molding of my own heart.
In the past year's journey of learning to place boundaries, I have also had to come to terms with the reactions I may receive from others. In the past, I've been the kind of person to bend over backwards trying to fulfill the expectations of others in ministry or just in life. That tendency to want to be the most responsible one left me often exhausted and very wounded when I realized that as soon as you fulfill one demand responsibly, there will always be another one on its tail. It never ends. But in this process of saying no and proactively deciding who I will be and how I will spend my time just out of a need to avoid burn out, I am finding that there is a certain kind of delight and revelry in embracing your own limitations. (There is also a great difference between embracing your limitations happily and apologetically mumbling a no while feeling like a failure and wallowing in guilt because you said no.) Here me out--
It's hard to field negative reactions, true. It's hard to know that a limitation I have, even one I've been clear about from the beginning, has caused someone else to feel pain, disappointment, or to lose respect for me. In the past few weeks, I've encountered just such a situation, and I've been at a loss for what else can be done. Not everyone is going to value your no and see it as an opportunity for self-reflection and spiritual growth. Not everyone will take responsibility for his or her own needs. And, when their knee-jerk reaction is to place all blame on you, that's an ego hit that can send you scrambling for a defense strategy. But there is something so freeing about being open to confrontation and allowing the person to air their complaints and still being able to say with utmost sincerity, "You're right. I haven't been what you want me to be. I have failed in providing what you need. And, I'm sorry for that. I am limited in what I can do." Often, that's not the answer that the other person wants to hear because they'd prefer restitution or maybe even groveling, but the beauty of it is that it's a confession that at our very core, we need God's grace, just as the person accusing us of not being enough does as well.
Let me unpack this a little bit: When we accept and respect our limitations instead of trying to hide them, ignore them, or being embarrassed by them, we start to exit the realm of religious perfection in order to enter the realm of Kingdom excellence. Perfection is based on wanting to fulfill the expectations of those around us and the expectations we place on ourselves. They may even be the expectations we think God has of us. When perfection is our goal, striving and fear of failure are inevitable. We begin to hate our limitations--our need for rest, our need for solitude, our need for true friendship, our need to listen to God's voice, our need to heal, our need to guard our heart, etc.--because they keep us from getting more done or from being who everyone else wants us to be. And the result is that we start to have a divided heart. We divorce ourselves from our needs and emotions in the name of results and productivity. We become someone we weren't created to be. We lose our entire purpose of connection and being deeply known because we've exiled our heart from our being. But, as Christa Black said in her message, "Learning How to Live from a Whole Heart,"
"The condition of your heart determines the condition of your life."
Kingdom excellence actually begins with a healthy heart. It's when we do what we do--our gifts, our talents, our calling, serving, whatever--from a heart that is secure in God's love and is joyful in the giving. Kingdom excellence is all about being a whole person--with needs, limitations, gifts, desires, imperfections--for God's glory. Most often, God's glory shines brightest in our limitations. Perfectionism is our unconscious attempt at thwarting God's glory by trying to justify our own worth (a worth we already have through the Cross). I think Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend say it well in their book, Safe People:
"Make friends with your needs. Welcome them. They are a gift from God, designed to draw you into relationship with him and with his safe people. Your needs are the cure to the sin of self-sufficiency."
When you embrace your needs and limitations, you no longer have to fear confrontation. You have permission to fail, and you can openly admit to the ways that you're lacking or are still in process. And, best of all, you can function from a foundation of God's grace and mercy. You can walk in the freedom that while you won't be enough for everyone, He always is. In Isaiah 29:19, it says,
"Once more the humble will rejoice in the Lord; the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel."
We can't fully enter into that joy until we give ourselves permission to be needy and humbled, to openly admit that we have limits and don't have it all together.
Having a whole heart that accepts its limits will also bring freedom in other areas of our lives. Shauna Niequist offers her point-of-view in this area in her book, Present over Perfect:
"Some of being an adult, though, is about protecting and preserving what we discover to be the best parts of ourselves, and here's a hint: they're almost always the parts we've struggled against for years. They make us weird or different, unusual but not in a good way. They're our child-sides, our innate selves, not the most productive or competitive or logical, just true. Just us."
When we operate with a perfectionist mentality, we see our gifts or talents or even otherness often as burdens. Maybe they're aspects of ourselves we're exhausting to be productive or maybe they're aspects of ourselves that we're squelching in an effort to fit in better. Even as we serve God, we can get confused and think that we have to use our gifts to impress God or win His favor. That has often been a struggle for me. I once received a word from a youth pastor who told me that he saw me always lugging around a treasure chest. I was constantly filling the chest with little things that I felt were of value. But, when I took that chest to God and opened the lid, the things I saw of value before became lumps of dirty coal instead of jewels from my point of view, and I left God ashamed. But God left His throne to pursue me because He wasn't interested in my treasures as much as He was interested in me.
God gives us talents, desires, and interests as means of enjoyment and as a means of better discovering who He is. I love to read, and I have found God's presence in the pages of books that were never written with any sort of spiritual purpose. I love to write, and as I write, the words tumble out of my mind with seemingly no rhyme or reason, but God picks them up and puts them and my life in order. God is our greatest example of creativity. He is very original, and He gave us the privilege of creating alongside Him, seeing His fingerprint on the material we use to make art and feeling His breath in our lungs as we sing. Bill Johnson said in his message "Worship in All Seasons,"
"Don't do things for performance; do it because it's alive, right, and true."
Just as a father takes joy in watching his children enjoy the feel of ocean waves or the excitement of learning how to ride a bike or the discovery of how a caterpillar moves, God delights in our enjoyment of the world He created for us, our excitement over the things that we learn, and our discovery of His presence in the most unlikely, non-religious places.
Oftentimes, we operate out of perfectionism because we're convinced that being holy is being perfect in our own strength as He is perfect. But holiness is valuing our intimate relationship and connection with God more than anything else. We become more like Him the closer that we are to Him, and we can't do that if we're giving Him a divided or hidden heart. Seeing our needs and limitations as an invitation to lean into the warmth of His safety and to accept His ready hand of help is the first step to true freedom. I know for me, it's been a long time coming.
Sarah
In the past year's journey of learning to place boundaries, I have also had to come to terms with the reactions I may receive from others. In the past, I've been the kind of person to bend over backwards trying to fulfill the expectations of others in ministry or just in life. That tendency to want to be the most responsible one left me often exhausted and very wounded when I realized that as soon as you fulfill one demand responsibly, there will always be another one on its tail. It never ends. But in this process of saying no and proactively deciding who I will be and how I will spend my time just out of a need to avoid burn out, I am finding that there is a certain kind of delight and revelry in embracing your own limitations. (There is also a great difference between embracing your limitations happily and apologetically mumbling a no while feeling like a failure and wallowing in guilt because you said no.) Here me out--
It's hard to field negative reactions, true. It's hard to know that a limitation I have, even one I've been clear about from the beginning, has caused someone else to feel pain, disappointment, or to lose respect for me. In the past few weeks, I've encountered just such a situation, and I've been at a loss for what else can be done. Not everyone is going to value your no and see it as an opportunity for self-reflection and spiritual growth. Not everyone will take responsibility for his or her own needs. And, when their knee-jerk reaction is to place all blame on you, that's an ego hit that can send you scrambling for a defense strategy. But there is something so freeing about being open to confrontation and allowing the person to air their complaints and still being able to say with utmost sincerity, "You're right. I haven't been what you want me to be. I have failed in providing what you need. And, I'm sorry for that. I am limited in what I can do." Often, that's not the answer that the other person wants to hear because they'd prefer restitution or maybe even groveling, but the beauty of it is that it's a confession that at our very core, we need God's grace, just as the person accusing us of not being enough does as well.
Let me unpack this a little bit: When we accept and respect our limitations instead of trying to hide them, ignore them, or being embarrassed by them, we start to exit the realm of religious perfection in order to enter the realm of Kingdom excellence. Perfection is based on wanting to fulfill the expectations of those around us and the expectations we place on ourselves. They may even be the expectations we think God has of us. When perfection is our goal, striving and fear of failure are inevitable. We begin to hate our limitations--our need for rest, our need for solitude, our need for true friendship, our need to listen to God's voice, our need to heal, our need to guard our heart, etc.--because they keep us from getting more done or from being who everyone else wants us to be. And the result is that we start to have a divided heart. We divorce ourselves from our needs and emotions in the name of results and productivity. We become someone we weren't created to be. We lose our entire purpose of connection and being deeply known because we've exiled our heart from our being. But, as Christa Black said in her message, "Learning How to Live from a Whole Heart,"
"The condition of your heart determines the condition of your life."
Kingdom excellence actually begins with a healthy heart. It's when we do what we do--our gifts, our talents, our calling, serving, whatever--from a heart that is secure in God's love and is joyful in the giving. Kingdom excellence is all about being a whole person--with needs, limitations, gifts, desires, imperfections--for God's glory. Most often, God's glory shines brightest in our limitations. Perfectionism is our unconscious attempt at thwarting God's glory by trying to justify our own worth (a worth we already have through the Cross). I think Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend say it well in their book, Safe People:
"Make friends with your needs. Welcome them. They are a gift from God, designed to draw you into relationship with him and with his safe people. Your needs are the cure to the sin of self-sufficiency."
When you embrace your needs and limitations, you no longer have to fear confrontation. You have permission to fail, and you can openly admit to the ways that you're lacking or are still in process. And, best of all, you can function from a foundation of God's grace and mercy. You can walk in the freedom that while you won't be enough for everyone, He always is. In Isaiah 29:19, it says,
"Once more the humble will rejoice in the Lord; the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel."
We can't fully enter into that joy until we give ourselves permission to be needy and humbled, to openly admit that we have limits and don't have it all together.
Having a whole heart that accepts its limits will also bring freedom in other areas of our lives. Shauna Niequist offers her point-of-view in this area in her book, Present over Perfect:
"Some of being an adult, though, is about protecting and preserving what we discover to be the best parts of ourselves, and here's a hint: they're almost always the parts we've struggled against for years. They make us weird or different, unusual but not in a good way. They're our child-sides, our innate selves, not the most productive or competitive or logical, just true. Just us."
When we operate with a perfectionist mentality, we see our gifts or talents or even otherness often as burdens. Maybe they're aspects of ourselves we're exhausting to be productive or maybe they're aspects of ourselves that we're squelching in an effort to fit in better. Even as we serve God, we can get confused and think that we have to use our gifts to impress God or win His favor. That has often been a struggle for me. I once received a word from a youth pastor who told me that he saw me always lugging around a treasure chest. I was constantly filling the chest with little things that I felt were of value. But, when I took that chest to God and opened the lid, the things I saw of value before became lumps of dirty coal instead of jewels from my point of view, and I left God ashamed. But God left His throne to pursue me because He wasn't interested in my treasures as much as He was interested in me.
God gives us talents, desires, and interests as means of enjoyment and as a means of better discovering who He is. I love to read, and I have found God's presence in the pages of books that were never written with any sort of spiritual purpose. I love to write, and as I write, the words tumble out of my mind with seemingly no rhyme or reason, but God picks them up and puts them and my life in order. God is our greatest example of creativity. He is very original, and He gave us the privilege of creating alongside Him, seeing His fingerprint on the material we use to make art and feeling His breath in our lungs as we sing. Bill Johnson said in his message "Worship in All Seasons,"
"Don't do things for performance; do it because it's alive, right, and true."
Just as a father takes joy in watching his children enjoy the feel of ocean waves or the excitement of learning how to ride a bike or the discovery of how a caterpillar moves, God delights in our enjoyment of the world He created for us, our excitement over the things that we learn, and our discovery of His presence in the most unlikely, non-religious places.
Oftentimes, we operate out of perfectionism because we're convinced that being holy is being perfect in our own strength as He is perfect. But holiness is valuing our intimate relationship and connection with God more than anything else. We become more like Him the closer that we are to Him, and we can't do that if we're giving Him a divided or hidden heart. Seeing our needs and limitations as an invitation to lean into the warmth of His safety and to accept His ready hand of help is the first step to true freedom. I know for me, it's been a long time coming.
Sarah
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