10 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT...

In my last post, I mentioned a tendency I witness frequently - a tendency that distresses me because I see it so all too often in myself - of finding fault with Them/Those People while tenaciously resisting acknowledgment of sin in my own heart. Where does this come from?

For me, I think this tendency comes from a deep sense of inadequacy on my own part, a sense of "falling short" which is so painful that I reflexively divert attention from my own faults to the faults of others in an act of self-defense.

Scattered across my desk are sticky notes and scraps of paper scrawled with ideas for potential blog posts.  Sitting down to write today, I find a common thought jotted in multiple places: Never Enough, Not Good Enough, The Land of Never Quite Right.

To what do these sticky-note "blog ideas" refer?

I have lived my entire life in The Land of Not Good Enough.

An A+ in high school chemistry was not good enough if my 6-week grade average was 96%. If I had worked harder, could I not have made a 100%? First-chair French horn was okay, but could I not also have qualified for All West Band?

I was not the pretty child in my family. I was not the smartest child in my family. I was not musically or artistically talented. I wasn't even the nicest child in my family. I was just....well...meh....

And so, in my little brain, I created this sad, sick, twisted dichotomy of Good vs. Bad.

Them vs. Me.

Everything and everybody sifted into a distorted moral hierarchy.

Extroverted, friendly, outgoing: Good.

Introverted, shy, contemplative (like me): Bad.

Compliant, peace-keeping, submissive: Good.

Strong convictions, idealistic, passionate (like me): Bad.

Tough, thick-skinned, hard-core: Good.

Sensitive, empathetic, emotional (like me): Bad.

Passive, compliant, a follower: Good, if you are a female.

Smart, ambitious, driven: Bad, if you are a female (like me).

Surely you can see how this Me vs. Everybody Else Who Has Life Figured Out dichotomy quickly became unbearable. So I flipped the game and made my own set of rules. Rules that proved that I was the good guy/superior/the winner, and They were inferior/the losers.

But now, finally...

I am beginning to understand that there aren't many Good Guys or Bad Guys, Winners or Losers...that mostly, there is just Different...and we are all just doing the best that we can to survive.

Yes, I am sensitive. Someone points that out like an accusation of inferiority or guilt. I am learning to respond, "Yes, I am sensitive. Thank you for noticing"...like they paid me a compliment.

"You're too idealistic. This is the real world we're living in." Like C. S. Lewis's Puddleglum, I am learning to think and speak clearly, and I would rather live in an idealist's world than someone else's Green Witch "real" world any day.

This is a long ramble to say...

I have lived in The Land of  Not Good Enough pretty much my entire life, and I think it's time to relocate.

There is a sort of "game" I play on occasion with my kids and my grands. It's called "10 Things I Love About ----"

The last time I played this game was with my granddaughter Hazel. We were sitting beside each other, passing notes during church. (Sorry, Gage.) Hazel wrote a note, and passed it to me, and I wrote a note and passed it to Hazel. My note was "10 Things I Love About Hazel," with a list...of 10 things...that I love about Hazel.

You get the idea.

Anywho, this week, I got to thinking, if I played the game "10 Things I Love About ---" with myself....well, I don't know if I could even do that.

Because Myself is Not Good Enough. Never has been.

So right now, real time, I am going to take one more step away from The Land of Not Good Enough, and I am going to try to list 10 Things I Like About Myself. (Come on, seriously? Baby steps, here. Let me learn to like...and maybe one day I'll learn to love...)

10 THINGS I LIKE ABOUT ME (in no particular order):

1. I make really good cornbread.
2. I am ridiculously loyal.
3. I have beautiful children.
4. I am very sensitive. (That is a positive, by the way, not a negative.)
5. And empathetic.
6. I am an idealist.
7. I talk to Jesus all the time. Out loud. Especially when I am driving.
8. I cry a lot.
9. I am quiet and contemplative.
10. I really like my white hair.
11. I make a mean gin and tonic.
12. I love singing along with Phil Wickham - loudly - on the radio.

Well, lookee there...12 things I like about myself! That wasn't hard at all.

Maybe one day, The Land of Not Good Enough will be one of those tears Jesus wipes away, never to be remembered again.