Last week I posted about how I'm reading Sacred Marriage--a great book. In this book, there's all kinds of ideas and stories and points that Gary Thomas talks about that keep rolling around in my head as I go about life. As I'm driving down the road or lying in bed at night or watching my kids work in class, I find myself mulling over some things he talks about.
One of those ideas that he talks about is that our spouses are the people that hold a mirror up to us so that we can see who we really are--often more so than anyone else can. And often times, this is not a fun process. Sometimes what we see in that mirror is hard to take because not only does it show the good part of us that we like to show the world, but it also shows the bad and the ugly that we don't generally like to show off.
So true.
I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days. When I mess up or fail or say I'm going to be better at something and then don't or say I'm not going to react a certain way to something and then do, and the mirror of marriage plainly reflects this, I have this tendency to be really hard on myself. I start thinking that I will never be good enough, will never measure up, will never be able to be the kind of wife I want to be etc. The trouble with that though is that I just get depressed and nothing does get better, so it's like I create this weird self-fulfilling prophecy. If all I do is focus on what I failed at or didn't do right, nothing changes.
Now I was thinking about this as I was driving out to visit my parents today, and the song Empty Me by Chris Sly came on the radio. I immediately turned it up and started singing, and when we got to the chorus and I found myself belting out the words
Empty me of the selfishness inside
Every vain ambition and the poison of my pride
And any foolish thing my heart holds to
Lord empty me of me so I can be filled with you.
something dawned on me.
That's what it's all about. So much of my not feeling like I'm good enough is SO selfish. It's not that I'm being convicted by God, it's that I'm afraid someone will think I'm not good enough, or that I feel that I'm not good enough. It's about measuring up to the world's standards or another person's standards and not only does it not matter if I measure up to their standards or meet their approval, most of the things I am trying to measure up with really don't matter AT ALL. Like whether or not my house is immaculate. Or whether or not I cook every night. Or whether or not my kids are doing exactly what my principal thinks they should be doing when she walks in, even though they're engaged and learning. Or whether I ran the amount of miles I said I was going to run in the time I said I was going to run it in.
Those things that I tend to measure myself by don't matter. And if I get to the heart of it, they have way more to do with my pride and vain ambitions to look good to other people than anything else. Those words that I was singing, about the poison of my pride and emptying myself of all the selfish ambitions and foolish things that my heart holds to, really hit me today. I want that stuff gone from my life--I don't want it to be what I measure myself by.
What matters is that I am constantly striving to reflect God and to grow in my relationship with Him. To really live that out. Really. To be kind when my human inclination is to be mean or retaliate. To be pleasant and positive, when all I want to do is complain. To do something different than I've always found myself doing, if that action or reaction is not something that Jesus would have done. To read the Bible when I want to watch TV. To serve without wanting to be served in return. In the past I've said that I want to be different, but it was really more that I wanted people to think that I was good. But it's so much more than that--it's about knowing Jesus and being like him--and I find myself wanting that so badly right now, because as I see continually how broken I am, I am realizing on a deeper level just how much I need Him. I can't be who I want to be without Him. I just can't.
I know I will fail. And I know that I'm not going to be perfect. But, I know that God wants to work in us and change us and mold us to look more and more like Him. I'm clinging to that.
And those are the things that I do need to be working on and that I do need to feel convicted of and upset about when I fail, because those things matter. As I work out my salvation, it is a constant process of putting off the old man and putting on the new. But still, ultimately, those things do not make me better or worse. Because, as hard as it is for me to grasp, nothing I do or do not do makes me any more or any less loved or saved by God. It's not about measuring up.
Even though it's hard at times, I am so thankful for the mirror that marriage holds up in front of me. And for good Christian music.
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