When Limits Make Us Free

Such as I have give I Thee. 
—Old Sunday School song

Because we have such a hope, we are very bold. 
—The Apostle Paul, letter to the ancient Corinthian church

Basically, it seems to me that there’s never enough. Never enough time, never enough money, never enough time with friends, never enough cookies. Sometimes it’s hard not to focus on what is lacking, rather than on what is present. I think I start to see everything in my life as either a drain or a resource. While important to identify life-giving activities and pursuits, as well as what depletes us, it can also turn into a very self-centered mind-set. How do we balance what we have with what comes our way? How do we not let everything and anything become weights that make us look constantly inward? How do we make what we have into enough? 

Maybe what I really feel is that I’m not enough. I’m not enough for all the things demanded of me. I’m not enough for all the things I expect from myself. Even though fibromyalgia has made me let go of a lot of expectations from myself, there’s still so many things I would like to see myself do and accomplish. I’m not even talking about the Book I’m going to write to someday, or travel all around the globe. I would like to be able to hike a mile without a break or feeling like I’m going to die. I would like to be able to make dinner consecutive nights in a row. I would like to be able to go to church again on Sundays. Just a lot of little things that add up to big things in my head. 

What I’m finally realizing though, in the middle of all my yearnings and desires to do more, to be more, is that it’s good to not be enough. It’s actually freeing being able to say I am not enough. This life is too much sometimes, and I just can’t do it all. Sometimes, most times, I can’t even do the little things. 

Here’s why it’s ok: Not being enough, not having what it takes, not being able to pull myself up by my bootstraps, not being able to reach for the moon because I’m tired and it’s too far away, makes me see how much I need others. How much I need Jesus. How much I need to ask for help, for support, for ideas, for comfort. How much I need to pray and be open and vulnerable and honest. With myself, with others, with God. It takes guts, I think, to look in the mirror and say, while I’m not enough, I’m actually ok. In the middle of my not-enoughness, I will find that that the opposite is true. What I thought was being-enough, was actually impossible. The paradox is admitting that when we are utterly incapable of doing life by ourselves, we will learn how to do what we can well. When we realize our limitations, our smallness, we can accomplish the possible, and we will see that, yes, that actually is enough.

While I don’t have a ton of energy to give, or a million dollars to give to charity, or a best-seller to give the world, I have other things to give. I have time to sit and laugh and talk—I’m usually not in a hurry. I am not afraid to pull out the frozen taquitos to serve a guest. I have time to pray for others, to ask God for help and healing and direction. While I’m working on getting better physically, I’m learning how to care for this body, this great and bumbling gift from God. I’m trusting that being chronically ill will make me into a more compassionate and giving person. I’m learning to love God and love others no matter where I’m at, no matter how much I have to give, because, really, it’s not about me.

It’s about God taking whatever I have to give, and making it enough. It’s about that hope and that trust in Him, that He knows what He’s doing, even with a broken person like myself. He can take the smallest of things and make them beautiful and significant, like woven threads in a tapestry. This makes us bold in our giving, no matter how small. We are free to give what we have, knowing that God can and will transform the smallest sacrifice, the littlest gift. 

Hope in Focus

You can dance in a hurricane, but only if you’re standing in the eye. 

-Brandi Carlile, The Eye

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold. 

-The Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 3:12

I’ve been thinking a lot about hope lately—how necessary and hard it is to hold close. 

Sometimes hope is a hot potato. You just need to not drop it, or it’ll fall on the floor and get dirty and smashed. But on the other hand, maybe hope will burn us if we hang on it too long. If hope is not realized, not seen, will it harm us, dent us, make us misshapen? And if hope is too hot to handle, does that mean it’s just too much to hope for? 

Maybe hope is more like one of my lost earrings. I know it’s there somewhere—I just can’t find it. Must be buried in a drawer or under some furniture. It will look really nice when I finally find it, use it how it was meant to be used. Someday it will surface. But for now, I’ll just have to live without it. 

Brightening up our movie collection with happy lights. 

This elusive thing called hope seems, then, so dear and fragile. It’s also one of the great facets of the faith-the Apostle Paul says that after everything else in life, three things remain: faith, hope, and love. So in addition to being a bit slippery to hang on to, it’s essential to following Jesus as we travel this world. Makes it a bit tricky, doesn’t it? Hope gets rained out, gets benched when we need it the most. Circumstances and choices collapse on top of our wishes and desires, snuffing them out, breaking them in half. But without hope, we merely limp along. We get by. And we wonder where the abundant life, the good life went. We then set aside our expectations so we won’t keep stumbling over them. Hopes may get moved to a “someday thing” or a far-off thing in our minds, and we move on to functioning. 

When life gets rumpled, when it gets stuck in a seemingly endless montage of gray days and rough nights no matter the weather, how do we relight the candle of hope? How do we set it bravely on top of our lives? How do we make our lives receptive to hope and expectation? 

I think that it does come back to putting one foot in the other, even though it seems like a poor substitute for felt hope, for realized expectations. At first it seems almost false to “just function,” as though we’re putting on an act. But when hope is absent or faint, it makes sense we must practice having it. We must practice hope, even when it feels foreign or nonsensical. Just how I know my lost earring is there somewhere, we must live in the reality of hope, even though we can’t always feel it or see it. When we visit with friends, we are practicing hope. When we read a favorite book or start a new hobby or project, we are practicing hope. When we say “I love you” or “I care about you” to the loved ones in our lives, we are practicing hope. When we plan our future with open hands and open minds, knowing that things can change at any time, we can do so in hope. 

When we are practicing hope and expectation, we can more easily look to the Maker of Hope and Peace. We can remember that Jesus is indeed the Author and Creator of Hope. We can remember all the things He’s done for us in the past and use them to light our way. We can look forward to what He’s going to do in the future with us and through us. When we don’t even know what to hope for, we can rest in the fact that Jesus intercedes for us and knows what we need. We can rest in His love, knowing that He can use us in all our weaknesses, even when we don’t have much strength that we can give. Although we can’t summon hope like a magic spell, we can ground ourselves in remembrance and thankfulness. And when we do, I have a suspicion that hope will begin to bloom, as they say, where we’re planted.