The Day I Let God Down
I had never realized how achievement driven I was, until the achievements became impossible to achieve.
Ha.
In a harsh retrospective, I have found my view of God and his beautiful atoning work, to be incorrect. This is mainly because I don’t see God’s atoning work as a complete and finished work. I see the work as half-completed, one that I must strive to end. Of course, I would never openly admit to this view of God, as it is heretical and not one that I choose to believe; but my actions and (more often) thoughts prove that perhaps I do believe it.
When will the striving cease?
I am loved by God. God has chosen me. God has finished the work on the cross. God has set me free.
I don’t like being in trouble. I know, I know, who does? But when I get in trouble my heart races. I’m an adult and when I am challenged by authority and it seems that I will be “in trouble” my body begins to shake.
Is that normal?
There is a nightmare that starts and ends with an authority figure for whom I can do no right. There is always a critique on what I do. There is always a standard I cannot meet. There is always a sarcastic, imaginary spit-in-the-face, slap of my hand, reminder that I am a peon.
God has asked me to continue sleeping.
I need to wake. I need to run to someone who loves me and be reminded that I am worthy of love.
God says, “sleep.”
Looking to the men of the Bible is not a wonderful help for me. Jeremiah was put in stocks, and God allowed it. Daniel was thrown in the Lion’s den, and God allowed it. Paul was shipwrecked and beaten and thrown in jail and God allowed it. Christ was crucified, and God…. you get my point. So my nightmare? Is it outside of the Way?
My arms are growing tired of being raised in surrender. All the while, the words of Peter ring in my heart, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” I have no where to go. My life motto is slowly becoming:
Through eyes wet with tears, I can see the promise.
As I plot my escape, all roads lead to the same dead end.
It’s not the dead end that let’s God down, by the way. It’s the choice to go down those roads in the first place.
As the warm, salty tears make their unashamed way from my eyes to my mouth, I look up to God, and I am seen. My weakness is not letting God down. The war inside me wages.
Oh Louis, you’re not letting God down.
I am a fraud! I am worse than they think.
Louis, Louis, Louis, you are not letting God down.
It’s a simple truth, really:
I am not letting God down, because I was never holding God up.
There is nothing for me to add to God’s atoning work. There is nothing for me to mess up. I can cry. I can scream, “foul play.” God stays for it. I am tired and weak and humbled.
God sees
me.
No, the nightmare doesn’t end. No, the tears don’t stop. But right here, right now, I am seen and I am loved. Today, that is enough.
-Louis