Sufficient.

So, you may have noticed that I missed yesterday's post. Honestly, I was not trying to be avoidant or self-protective by not posting. I got home after midnight and had to be up for school at 5am, so it was more that I was exhausted and couldn't think of anything. Maybe that is self-protective. But I digress.

I had this window open to try and post something last night, because I had made a commitment and I intended to stick to it. That's what I do. I follow through on what I say I will do. If I don't follow through, I feel like a failure. And if I'm a failure or I'm not dependable, then people won't like me. Flawless logic, I know.

I'm in a profession where I have the incredible role of being a person that offers grace to people who feel like they've failed in some way or another. I am trying to learn not to make excuses for behaviors, but to help people understand that their behaviors make sense, and that there is grace to cover us all. That's the beauty of Christ, after all. That we have failed, and that his perfection and sacrifice covers us. He is glorified in our weaknesses. While sin and brokenness is painful and awful, the rupture in our relationship with God (and others) allows for the beauty of repair and reconciliation. I truly, deeply, profoundly believe that beauty comes from ashes.

And yet...

I still hold myself to a standard that I cannot achieve. I try to be perfect. I don't offer myself grace. I get defensive when I fail because I want others to think that I'm a better version of myself than I know I am. (That's a bad sentence, but I'm not going to fix it, because I'm trying to teach myself a lesson here about not having to be perfect.)

So by not posting yesterday, by failing to follow through on one menial day of a meager forty day commitment, I am acknowledging my inability to do life "right." I am allowing myself the space to fail, apologizing to my patient Father that I cannot even keep the simplest of promises to him despite my best intentions, and accepting that his grace can cover me. For this moment, anyway.

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
~ 2 Corinthians 12:9-10