In His Grip

If I look back on the past year, I can see how there have definitely been times where I’ve been in deeper struggles with my faith and have had increased doubts and worries. Yet there have also been times where I have been so much more attuned to God, more in love with Him, than I have been in the last few months. I recognize that every relationship has highs and lows, and I can’t always be on the “I’m a Christian and life is awesome!” mountaintop. Still, I have been wondering what more I can do to regain the mountain and the view of clarity that comes from being closely in sync with the Creator of the universe. I have tried to stay a perfect Christian, but sometimes I find that I go through the entire day without really thinking, much less acknowledging God. The past few weeks I have had extreme difficulty in finding the focus to read my Bible and pray, feeling that, even as I have been reading about the grace of God and the things that His children should be exhibiting in their daily lives, I was failing miserably on all counts. I could read all that I was supposed to read, but within 10 seconds I would fail, sin, and feel bad. Things seemed like they were just a futile circle of never learning how to be good enough. I recognize that this sounds like I’ve been super depressed since I moved to Iowa. I can attest that I have not been depressed. There are levels of sadness that accompany being alone so much and having new things all around, but I’ve been doing ok. This faith struggle was more of apathy than anything else, and it’s hard to escape apathy when you are processing things all alone at the end of a long day of work.

Last Thursday, I had a meeting with my supervisor. She told me that I was doing great music-wise, but she felt a lack of confidence in the way I presented myself. She said that I gave off an air of being too concerned with what others thought of me without analyzing my own actions or thoughts for simply what they were. At first, I was really shocked by this estimation. After all, I have spent most of my life saying that I don’t care what other people think and that I am my own person without being swayed by the need to please others. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how I think others are watching me hundreds of times a day. I think that other people are constantly thinking of me and judging the times when I’m awkward around them or when I am unsure how to adequately express myself or when I accidentally insult them, when in reality, my perceptions that I am being awkward or insulting are generally not even recognized as such by the other party. I realized that even basic interactions get analyzed for a long time after the fact: When that nurse walked past me, did she get a bad impression of me from my awkwardly standing around? Did he think that I didn’t want to be friendly when I said “hello” and then moved on without conversation? Do they think I’m a freak because I believe in Bigfoot and adventures, and will that affect my standing with them and their ability to love me (guys, I’m serious about Bigfoot and seriously can’t get through a blog without mention of him. Anyways.)? The list could go on and on. And as I thought about this internal monologue of questions that flow through my mind on a daily basis, I realized the problem doesn’t lie in how other people perceive me, the problem lies in the assumptions I make as to how others perceive me and my own inability to forgive myself. I could write a whole list of reasons and excuses but the fact is, somewhere in my lifetime, I subconsciously decided that I had to be perfect to be accepted and loved and when perfection could not be achieved, I have looked to the responses of others instead of looking to myself and letting myself be forgiving about my inability to achieve perfection. Most of those people reading this blog know me well, and know how much I crave adventures, how obsessed I am with finding random, off-the-beaten-path things that are generally only visited by old retired couples on their cross-state RV trips. I’ve seen several “world’s largest” in my 22 years—largest concrete totem pole, largest pecan, largest ball of sisal twine, and largest goose are just a few examples. There’s a website calledroadsideamerica.com and it lists all these off-beat attractions by state. I’ve already been pursuing some in Iowa, and I find that I am sometimes disappointed when attractions are not larger-than-life. I have this desire that in my quest to find an Easter Island head, the attraction will be 50-feet tall and utterly life-changing. But what I find instead is a statue as tall as me in the middle of a playground. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just not larger-than-life and awe-inspiring. Internally, I seem to think that my presence is larger-than-life, life-changing, and clearly important to those who see me, when in reality I’m more like the Easter Island head in the playground, and most of the people who I seem to want to impress or from whom I imagine a sense of judgment don’t even notice me or my awkwardness or feelings of insecurity. I impose judgment on myself and feel the weight of that judgment that I perceive from others as I go about the day. I am my own toughest, most judgmental critic.

It’s so foreign to be writing a blog such as this one. Part of my identity amongst peers has been the girl who is never afraid and who is not insecure. I’ve always known who I am and have been confident, or so I thought. I’m realizing these heart-problems are nothing new, though, and have been present for a very long time without being recognized as such, have actually been present for most of my life. All I can figure is that you learn the most about yourself when you are alone, and I am getting ample opportunities for self-reflection here in my tiny studio apartment.

Last Sunday, I went to church with all these ponderings about self-confidence and lack of forgiveness on my mind. I have been attending a mega-church here in Cedar Rapids, which is about as far from my roots as I can possibly go, having attended a church with a maximum of 50 people (on a very good holiday-type day) for the majority of my life. Despite the vast size of this church, I am very impressed with the pastor. He is incredibly laid back and preaches the Bible without seeking to please people with “feel good” lessons. His sermons are challenging and really relevant to life and growth as a Christian. This Sunday, he was speaking on the discipleship of new believers, and he gave an illustration of how many Christians perceive their relationship with Jesus to be. He had a guy come up and clasped hands with him, saying that we believe Jesus is holding onto us in that manner. The pastor counted off, and on his cue, the man who was demonstrating let go. Being only grasped by the fingers, he fell backwards and away from the pastor. Even though we know about grace, we seem to feel that our relationship with God is contingent on how tightly we can hold on. When we fail, as we inevitably do, we think we will fall away and God will have to scramble to re-grab us as we fight and work our way back to that reach of grace. The pastor then asked the man to hold his hand again. This time, the pastor reached out with his other hand and grabbed the man’s forearm even as the same hold as before was occurring in the other hand. On the count, the man let go, and neither man moved, connected tightly by the grip the pastor had on the other man’s forearm. His point was that this was in actuality a better depiction of how our relationship with God is as His children. We can grasp to His promises, but our ability to hold on is not what determines our relationship. Even when we let go and do not hold onto the promises, love, and grace of God, He still has us tightly in His grip, and we cannot be shaken. A girl I know from an old Bible study always signed things with the phrase “In His Grip”, and I never thought much about it before. Now I am realizing how powerful that statement is, and how beautifully descriptive of grace it is to say that I, as a Christian, am eternally in that place of being gripped.

Through that illustration of being in His grip, I realized that my lack of self-forgiveness and my distance in my relationship with God were not opposite events, they both stemmed from the same heart-problem, the problem that whispers to my soul that I can never be perfect or good enough. Instead of reveling in the love that God wants to freely give me, I have been looking instead to my own strength to be good enough in the eyes of God. I have been trying to make it through my days without grace. I am re-reading the book “Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller, and coincidentally the chapter that I read last night was all about grace and how difficult it is sometimes to accept grace when we try so hard to work our way into being good enough, into being perfect. One of the quotes knocked the breath out of me and seemed to describe my current heart-problem pretty well: “I love to give charity, but I don’t want to be charity. This is why I have so much trouble with grace.” It’s easy for me to do work. It’s hard for me to just accept unconditional love, especially when I see myself failing in so many ways and realize I am so unworthy of that love. But as a daughter of the King, my role in my relationship with God is to humbly receive that unconditional love, nothing more and nothing less.

So….my goal for this week is to not listen to the lies. When I walk about doing my various jobs in internship, I will dismiss the thoughts that I am being judged by or inconvenient to others. I am going to stop trying to be good enough. I am going to refuse any attempts to be perfect, to change myself to please others. I am going to focus solely on God’s love for me, and the fact that I am perpetually under a sea of grace and unconditional love that has absolutely nothing to do with my own merit or lack thereof. I am going to cling to the promises given in the Bible, and I am going to let God work at healing my brokenness. I’m not sure if this blog was cohesive, and I know that I am still a work in progress, but to quote some Switchfoot, kinda, “God gave His own Son to put motion inside of my soul”. This is the motion that is happening within me and throughout my life right now, and it is important to me to express these critical and sometimes difficult revelations in my life journey with those of you who truly care about and stay invested in my life. To end, I would like to quote another portion of the “Blue Like Jazz” chapter that spoke so deeply to my thirsty spirit last night:

“If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.”

In His Grip,

Katie