For the Perfectionists

I've been doing a lot of failing lately. 

Or at least coming up seriously short.

Or at least-est feeling incredibly insecure. 

Anyone else ever been so suddenly confronted by your own lack? By your inability to be enough, seemingly in every sphere of your life? It seems to me that I've entered such a season. My job, my hobbies, my relationships, my writing, my speaking, my appearance, my house, all things I've felt relatively sure of myself in most of the time, or for some just from time to time, feel...shaken. Every where I look I'm coming up short and my best efforts don't seem to be cutting it.

I wake up at four in the morning and run this list of failures over and over in my head. Something stupid I said that day, something I missed, something someone misunderstood, something I could have done better, something I should have known that I didn't. Even typing this I feel a little sick about it. I could type lists and lists if it would be helpful at all, but it won't be.

There is a worship song by Hillsong United we've been singing at my church lately, and I really liked it when I first heard it. It's called "Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)", and the bridge of it, which I sang at least twenty five times the first few days after discovering it, goes like this: 

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders. Let me walk upon the water, wherever you would call me. Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander, and my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Savior. 

It's a prayer. It's a prayer I prayed at least twenty five times in a few days. 

This hit me one day, in this middle of all this insecurity, that this was the prayer I had prayed. How funny that God listens to things like this and takes it seriously. To be honest, I think God took it a little more seriously than I did. But yes, I guess this is what it would feel like to be taken to a place where my trust is without borders. Yes, this is precisely what it would feel like to put my feet out onto something that will not hold me. To leave my little boat of self-assuredness. 

I cannot be a perfect person. Why do I run after this like it's a thing? It's not a thing. Why do I look at the holes in my boat and think that my salvation lies in my patching them? We weren't made this way-- to hold our own weight, to save our own selves or anyone else, to be gods. The call was not to be perfect people, the call was to be faithful people.

Faithful is a race worth running--to keep showing up after I make mistakes instead of hiding, to turn and go the other way when I've taken the wrong road yet again, to remember when I've forgotten, to return when I've run away, to trust God when I cannot trust myself, to look to Him when I'm out of myself and ideas. Faithful is a thing.

Take me deeper than I could, would go on my own.