I was a little off the radar for month 7 in Malaysia, partly because I had terrible wifi access, and partly because I was spending serious time with the Lord living out some hard lessons. I’m now in Ecuador for month 8, but I wrote this in Malaysia.
I work pretty well with goals, and I think one underlying goal I held upon beginning the race was to get better. To just be better at things the Lord asks of me. Plus, getting better is logical. The more you do something, the better at it you should become, right? I should be a better missionary now than I was 8 months ago. I should be better at prayer now than I was 4 months ago. I should be a better person, having intensely practiced living by God’s commands for several months.
But this month has been hard, and there are days when I question if I have a kind bone in my entire body. It can take every ounce of mental energy available to me to curb passive aggression some days. Days when sitting on my yoga mat to pray feels like punishment and penitence. That’s me. That’s what I can do. I wake up resentful that I sweat all night long. I am offended by every local that stares at my pale skin and scandalously exposed hair. I want to yell in people’s faces when they cat call, whistle, or call out random English phrases they know. “That doesn’t make sense!” “You sound ignorant and rude!” “I’m not here for your entertainment!” There are more, some are worse, but at least they stay in my head. Days when I interpret any simple task given me as beneath me, and just someone else trying to get out of their work. That’s what living this life for 8 months has shown me about myself.
It has shown me that not one of us is righteous, not even one. That I’m not backsliding away from who I’ve come to be, I’m being reminded of what I’m really capable of on my own strength. Which is quite an impressive amount of nothing.
I’m not getting better – I’m getting honest.
And the second you commit to being honest, you commit to being humbled. Every. Day. Over. And. Over. Because honestly, I can do so little by the strength of my own decent character. Honestly, I’d prefer to be selfish than selfless half the time. Honestly, my patience runs out. That’s the truth.
And let me tell you, the truth shall set you free.
Because I also have so many days where the Lord, in his mercy, brings me to his feet. His kindness brings me to repentance. I acknowledge and accept my nothingness outside of him, and my immeasurable worth in him, and that is freedom. When I let him lead, when I let him convict, when I let him define who I am and what good is, when I decide his way is always the better way, that is freedom.
I’m not backsliding. This is true forward motion, and it’s what the Lord wanted all along: to rely less and less on keeping myself afloat, and more and more on his miraculous and reckless grace, which never runs out. I look back on 8 months, and I see that I do love more fully now, I am more patient, I worship more freely, I forgive, and I let His grace restore me daily. I don’t do it perfectly, but I do know whose strength I operate on. I love because he first [and continually] loves me. That is what I rely on, and it never fails.
The goal is not a better version of me. The goal is me filled up so entirely with Him, that all that’s left is the uniquely-Jenna version of Christ on this earth. I can’t do it. He can. Learning that for 8 months has made me better.
“He must become greater; I must become less.” John 3:30
