I tend to want so badly, maybe too badly, to be the girl who has it all together.
You know the ones, right? The ones who seem to proclaim they are going to chase after their dreams and goals and then *magically* a few months later they are killing it. Goals = crushed. Girl boss mode activated. Instagram feed perfectly curated and consistent.
She is reading her Bible, exercising, drinking green smoothies, and getting 8 hours of sleep every night.
With discipline and hard work, you could get there too…or so we’re told. And then maybe we get a bit discouraged that our journey looks so different from others, even whenever things outside of our control step in.
While I think being able to do all of that is admirable and amazing, I don’t know about you, but it feels like my efforts fail me over and over. Or my body. Or my mental health. Or all at the same time.
Sometimes I feel overstimulated and overwhelmed and just want to get through todays goals like brushing my teeth and eating 3 meals. And then there’s the (false) guilt for not “doing more” even though we were really honoring our limits.
When we are in the middle of showing up to do the hard work in the space between “excitedly planning” and “goal crushed”, man that feels like an up hill climb, doesn’t it?
I’m sure that “girl boss” we admire on Instagram felt the same way, even if her process may have looked really pretty on her feed.
Over the last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of effort and the limitations of my humanity. I’ve been trying to unpack why I was experiencing this feeling of guilt for not “doing more”.
Can I be vulnerable with you for a moment?
It’s because I wanted my efforts to be enough.
But my efforts have limits. My human body has limits. My emotions have limits.
And as much as I wanted to, I was never going to find the sufficiency I was looking for within myself.
When we come to the edge of our limits, it is the LORD who sustains us.
Well, He was actually sustaining us all along.
As simple as this truth may seem, I think we have a choice. Are we going rest in the truth that He sustains and is sovereign - already knowing our human capacity? Or are we going to keep striving under the weight of self-imposed expectations we were never meant to carry?
