Sometimes I think I came on the Race expecting to come out of having it all together. It’s actually done quite the opposite: it’s made me realize I will never have it all together.
I want to share with you a journal entry I wrote last night as I was reflecting on some of the things the Lord has done as I’ve come to these realizations. As I read it, I really wanted to add transitions, change the order a little, make it sound smoother, but instead I decided to leave it just as it is with no edits, a little rawer, a little more vulnerable, a little less “together.”
“I went into the Race expecting to come out of it having it all together, more than ever before. But here I am, about to come out of it instead knowing that I never have to have it all together, and I never will! I’ve come out of it more aware of my own brokenness than ever before, but instead of walking in shame, I have learned to walk in the light and walk in a clearness of the Lord.
Right before the World Race, our squad mentor, Kate, talked about name meanings, and so I remembered that ‘Clarisse’ means bright and clear. At the time I had always understood the ‘bright’ joyful part, but clear was something I had always blown off or forgotten because I didn’t fully understand it. But at training camp, I felt like vulnerability and clearness was something the Lord was calling me into, and walking deeper into the meaning of my name. (That’s actually something I had forgotten about until right now).
I think a lot of that vulnerability was actually being vulnerable with myself and slowly discovering I didn’t have it as much together as I’d like to think. I always liked to appear happy and joyful on the outside, and I was afraid to let people in to things that weren’t happy because I didn’t want to be a burden. I would say I’m actually a pretty happy person plenty of the time, but at the times when I felt pain I relied on positivity to get me through things instead of the Lord, as crazy as it may sound. One of the most vulnerable things for me is to not automatically respond that I’m good when I’m not.
So I unknowingly had many walls up, thinking that I needed to have it all together.
I’m ridiculously hard on myself, and constantly had so many expectations for myself. I bought into the lie of perfection and believed it was attainable. I looked at the idea of “holiness” and saw it as something to achieve.
The Lord broke my heart a lot as I saw so many painful things happening in the world. He started to break me down by asking me to actually step into the pain and let myself not jump to the positivity of it all right away – to actually mourn and grieve it.
And then He asked me to step into my own brokenness. I was holding onto a lot of shame and lies I didn’t even know about.
I haven’t necessarily had a really hard childhood or things in my past that made me have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment, and so I believed that my testimony was worthless. I believed that I wasn’t ever enough, that I had to earn the Lord’s love and always strive. I never truly believed I was beautiful. I really didn’t love myself at all, and constantly thought of myself as unworthy, as a sinner.
These may all sound dramatic or exaggerated, but once ya start to believe it once, it begins to shape the ideology of the way we go about things and the whys of everything. When I stop and trace back why I do the things I do, I can trace it back to many of these lies.
And so all the while I kind of missed the whole point of Jesus. I mean, jiminy Christmas, I just took a year off to do missions, and I’m missing hope – what?
I am a sinner, and I am unworthy. I’m totally inadequate. These things are true… But when I decided to follow Jesus, He said I was made a whole new creation, that I was His child, and that I didn’t have to walk in that anymore. He called me out of the darkness and into His marvelous light. It’s not because of me that I’m adequate now, it’s because of Jesus. It’s because that’s who He says I am. When I walk into the things He says I am, I don’t even get a say.
It is when I realize these things are all because of Him that I realize I don’t have to have it all together – my weakness, my humanity actually glorifies the Lord instead. When I let people in to the fact that I don’t have it all together, when I let the walls down, I let them into my true self, with no masks, my authentic, realest version of Clarisse! It is then that I can walk into marvelous light, with no shame, with nothing hidden!
Shame isn’t from the Lord. Guilt is, but shame isn’t. It breaks His heart when we believe we have to hide, that we have to have it all together! He died on the cross so that we don’t have to have it all together! Isn’t that outrageous?! Isn’t that the most beautiful thing?!
I want to walk into that truth, into that hope, every single day forever!
Because then I get to hope in Jesus and not myself, and that is the most beautiful thing. What a sigh of relief.
And so now I hope to walk out of pretending to have it all together, to walk into marvelous light.”
