I don’t know why I distanced myself from Him. Maybe it was shame, maybe it was prideful self-sufficiency; this “I’ll come back when I’ve gotten my junk together” mentality…but the scary thing was that I didn’t even realize how much I pushed Him away until this one moment…
I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram- one of the many habits I chose to fill my free time with in effort to avoid intimacy- and I came across a caption that demanded my attention:
“At the end of my life, when I’m standing before God, I would hope that I didn’t have a bit of talent left, and could say “I used everything You gave me.”
I like Instagram more for the captions than I do for the pictures. But this picture, much like the caption, gripped my eyes. A girl was standing on a mountain top. The sun was setting, there was a beautiful, mysterious fog, and the wind perfectly caught her hair, giving the picture a sense of true serenity. I was jealous of this girl. I wanted to be exactly where she was. I wanted to feel exactly what she was feeling- it seemed like her heart was truly full, and as I looked at the picture, I felt as though I could almost hear the echos of my own soul, desperate to be full. Without thinking, the words spilled out of my mouth, “God I miss you.” It was all I could say. There was no “sorry.” There was no “I’ll be better.” There was just emptiness asking to be filled.
I naturally operate out of performance. Earning, deserving, achieving…it just makes sense to me. I’m a perfectionist, a people pleaser, an approval seeker- and in that destructive mindset, 90% of the time all I see is failure. The shame and guilt of my past mistakes run rampant in my mind. The fear of rejection, the desperation for acceptance, and the striving to be “someone” allows shame and anxiety to dominate and rule over me, tell me who I am, and hold me hostage with no ransom or exchange. It just wants me.
The Good News is, so does Jesus.
I thought of Peter. One minute he’s saying he’d die for Jesus, and the next minute, when that was actually a possibility, he denied ever knowing Him. Could you imagine the shame? I would have been crippled by it. I think “weeping bitterly” was probably an understatement. YET, 3 days later, there he is, on a boat about 100 yards off shore, and Jesus shows up resurrected. John goes “Peter! Look! Its Jesus!” and Peter, without a sensible thought, jumped into the water and swam to Jesus.That’s what I love about Peter- he was such a passionate and zealous-hearted man, that he never stopped to think before slicing off someone’s ear to defend his best friend, or walking on water to be where Jesus was, or jumping out of a boat that wasn’t even that far off shore just to get to Jesus faster.
Tonight, as those words fell out of my mouth, I felt like Peter jumping out of that boat and swimming to Jesus. Whatever it takes, whatever it looks like, whatever will get me to Him fastest. Because what made sense was distance…what made sense was that I didn’t deserve forgiveness. I didn’t earn that millionth second-chance. I didn’t achieve perfection and I sure as heck didn’t qualify for His love. But who cares about what makes sense…I think the reason Peter was so impulsive was because He didn’t let shame hold him back- he knew his best friend and savior well enough to know not to waste his time with that. So for me it was no surprise that there were no prerequisites or qualifications…just a Dad, saying “I missed ya, kid.”
I don’t know why I’m constantly cycling in and out of intimacy with Jesus. I don’t know where my self-sufficiency comes from. I don’t know why I try to impress Him and make Him proud. I’m still trying to figure all that out with Him. The cycle is so frustrating, and I’ve gotten so disheartened by it that I can’t even enjoy the victories without thinking “this isn’t going to last.” But I think Jesus wants to expose some stuff in me that’s going to be painful to surrender, and I think I’ve been scared of going there…and I think He’s going to teach me some stuff thats pretty deep and is going to require the discipline of choice to walk in and renew my mind in. It’s probably going to take time to work though…but I’m excited to have finally said yes to this new journey of growth, and I’m thankful that He sees my “work in progress” as a masterpiece. At the end of myself, I realize that I too want to be able to stand before Him one day and say “I have nothing left, I used everything You gave me.” Even if that was just 100 yards of ocean to swim. I think it starts here, with this simple yes.
