If only you could see yourself like I see you

When I look at people I meet every day, there seems to be two categories - there are the people who are always putting themselves down, who have little sense of their worth. Then there are the people who are always building themselves up, who seem to have a bit too much of a sense of their worth. 

Anyone else noticed that?

I think I usually fall into the first category. I'm pretty good at highlighting my negatives. I think one of the reasons for this is that I’ve always thought that saying good things about yourself was not humble. It seemed to be one of the things that got hammered into us at Sunday School – it’s wrong to be proud, we must be humble. And yes, of course that’s a good lesson, but I think I grew up with a bit of a distorted feeling about what humility was. To me, humility was everyone else being better and more important than me. It was putting myself down. It was not volunteering for things because other people could do them better. It was not admitting when I was good at something or did something well, because that was pride…

What I’ve come to realise is that those self-deprecating attitudes and actions are not humility. 

I think humility is seeing yourself as God sees you. 

If we have a proper sense of who we are and therefore who others are and if we act out of that, surely that’s the kind of humility that God wants. 

Not sure how God sees you? 

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

When I read this, I see myself as a newborn baby, fast asleep, knowing that nothing can harm me because my father is watching over me. I see a smitten father watching over me, bursting with joy, barely able to contain himself because he is so taken with me. He jumps for joy, sings a happy song and has a smile that takes over his whole face. Because of me.

“No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. 
But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be married.” Isaiah 62:4

I’ve always thought that, if it weren’t such an ugly name, I would call my first child Hephzibah (sorry to any of you Hephzibah’s out there). Because, even if it is a mouthful, it means ‘my delight is in her’, and I think that is the most beautiful meaning I’ve heard (this is from someone whose name means ‘lover of horses’). And because I know that feeling of being deserted and desolate, the thought of being delighted in feels like fresh water on parched lips.

“Five sparrows are sold for just two pennies, but God doesn’t forget a one of them. Even the hairs on your head are counted. So don’t be afraid! You are worth much more than many sparrows.” Luke 12:6-7

I have a couple of really good South African friends whose last name is Sparrow. In one of my meaner moments, thinking I was hilarious, I read them this verse. Thankfully, they took it as a joke. If I ever needed proof that God cares about me, surely this verse is proof – he cares enough to know how many hairs are on my head, although I hope He’s not counting the grey one I found yesterday (why do I have a grey hair in my twenties?!)

“For we are God’s masterpiece.” Ephesians 2:10

God is a God who loves to create. Look at a sunflower, look at a waterfall, look at a giraffe! He loves to create and He created me. And you. And He is not disappointed with his creation. We are his masterpiece. If He was going to display something in The Louvre, it would be us. That is how proud He is of us, how much He loves us.

So, go for it, you delightful masterpiece. 

                                           See yourself as God sees you 

                                                                         and live out of that place.

Under Construction

I want to be perfect...I want to be kind and generous all the time. I don't want to be jealous and angry and impatient and selfish. I want to love people with a perfect, unfailing love. I don't want to hurt them. I want to be reliable, humble, forgiving. I don't want to make mistakes.

My biggest mistake has come from believing that I have to be, that it's possible to be all these things, all the time, that it's not ok when I mess up. Believing that everyone around me is perfect and so much more useful than me. So when I do mess up, which I do, a lot...
Then comes the guilt...I messed up again
And the doubt...can I ever do anything good?
And the self-berating...I'm useless
And the despair...what's the point in even trying again?

But what if it is ok? What if I don't have to be perfect?

God doesn’t wait until we’re perfect, until we’re finished to use us. He takes us as we are
     flawed 
              and broken 
                         and hurting 
                                      and lost         

I always had a hard time believing that...till I actually looked in the Bible.

David committed adultery, Abraham lied, Ruth was a foreigner, Peter denied he knew Jesus, Paul killed Christians, Thomas doubted, Jeremiah was young, Moses had a stutter and a lot of excuses and Matthew cheated. 

But God used them all.

He had to do a little work on some of them first, smooth off a few rough edges, but none of those things were big enough to stop Him.

In the same way, there is nothing that you have done, nothing that you could do, nothing about your personality that can stop God. “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future,” said Oscar Wilde, so stop letting guilt hold you back. Stop letting fear of failure prevent you from taking the first step. Stop letting what other people think control who you are or what you do. Stop thinking that you’ll serve God and do what He wants some time in the future, when you’re older or wiser or can control your temper or you live somewhere else or you’re not single or you’re a better person.

God wants you now. He wants all of you now, how you are. That doesn’t mean He’s not going to work on you or change you, but you are a work in progress. You are under construction and you will always be, so the time to start living for God, being used by Him?   

That time is now.

Failure

I woke up this morning in the middle of a dream in which I was back at university. For some reason, one of my physio lecturers (just to give fellow UUJ physios a laugh - it was Mark Poulter) was conducting a French oral exam. I thought I'd done ok in it. I got 27%. I was pretty upset, looking for someone to blame. I was yelling at the lecturer, claiming injustice, unfairness, bias. I was ashamed. Everyone in the class knew I'd got 27% and they were all tiptoeing around me, looking at me with a mixture of shame and pity. 
Wow, my subconscious has some issues!

After writing about success last week and touching on failure, I'd been thinking about going into it more this week. The dream, the feeling like a failure when I woke up, made it even more clear.

I grew up terrified of failure. I was a geek at school, and I worked hard. With every assignment or project or exam at school, if I was not in the top five of the class, I considered that a failure. As I got a bit older, I think that attitude became a bit more destructive, because if I knew I wasn't going to be the best at something, or at least close to the best, I just wouldn't try. I started a lot of things - piano, violin, tennis, guitar, hockey. I gave all of them up at points, as soon as they got a bit difficult, as soon as I didn't meet up to standards.

Who hasn't felt like a failure at least once in their life? In work, in cooking (I've had some shockers) in sport, in relationships, in friendships, in morals, in attitudes...If you haven't, well, actually, I don't believe you!

We need to make the distinction between setback and failure, because so often, incredibly often, life deals us blows that knock us ten steps back when we have just fought to take two steps forward. You work your butt off to show your boss that you are worthy of promotion, only to see your lazy co-worker get that step up. You get up to train at 5 a.m. every morning and get injured the game before the squad is announced. You put aside your insecurities and carefully, wisely invest yourself into a relationship, only to be led on and hurt deeply.

These things are difficult to come back from. 

They are like a slap in the face that knocks you off your feet and makes you want to cower in the corner, nursing your wounds. The last thing you want to do is get up and try again. But you know what? 

Being knocked down is not failure. 

Failure is when you don’t get up and try again. Failure is not trying.

Sure, there are a lot of things to stop us from trying again. How about fear? Fear of a setback. Fear that when you get up and try again, you’re just going to get knocked down again. When you really want something, when you’re really invested in it, it’s so easy to think that not achieving that thing is the end of the world and the end of all hope. Boris Becker’s response to his 1987 Wimbledon upset loss to unknown Peter Doohan was one that more sportspeople maybe need to listen to: “I didn’t start a war. Nobody died. I just lost a tennis match”. I’m not belittling your problems, not saying that they are not important and don’t hurt. I’m just saying that to not try is a bigger tragedy than to be knocked down.

I'm not the first to say this, and definitely not the most eloquent, but I really believe that the only failure in life happens when you no longer try. Henry Ford, the guy who made the cars, went broke 5 times before he successfully started his company and became one of the richest men in the world at the time, said "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently". 

So do it...
                 begin again...
                                   pick up the pieces...
                                                                 stand up one more time...
                                                                                                     keep on going.

Success

Yesterday, I watched an interview with Valerie Adams, the New Zealand shot putter who was reigning Olympic champion, and expected to get the gold again. She didn’t, missing out to her Belarusian competitor. 

As she was interviewed, she was fighting back tears. A silver medal…and she was devastated. 

In the first few days of the Olympics, the New Zealand equestrian eventing team, which included 56-year-old Mark Todd, won bronze. In a post-match interview, Todd shared his medal with the reporter before joyously lifting her into his arms. A bit of a contrast to Valerie. 

So, who was more successful? What does success even depend on? Who or what determines whether we are successful or not? Is it about status? Gold medals? Money? Power?

That's a lot of questions. But I think it's something we need to ask ourselves a lot of questions about, because I think it's easy to just assume that the world's view of success is our view of success.

But if it is about status and money and power, what happens when we know we can't achieve those things? When we know we're never going to be as rich as Bill Gates, never going to win as many Grand Slams as Roger Federer, never going to sell as many books as J.K. Rowling...

I love Martin Luther King Jr,'s quote:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Maybe that is success - doing what we do, what we're called to do, but doing it to the best of our ability, whatever the outcome of that.

I guess in my job, maybe I would be seen as successful when I get the job as the All Blacks or Irish rugby physio. But what if that was my only goal? I think there are much more important goals for me. I think I am successful when I take away some of my 82-year-old patient's back pain. I think I am successful when I strap an ankle well to prevent one of my Under 20's rugby boys from spraining it. I think I am successful when a patient leaves their appointment feeling like someone has listened to them and believed them about how sore they are. I'm not saying that I'm always successful in these things, but I want to try. I want to do my job well, because I think that sometimes, it's the process rather than the result that makes us more successful people. 

I guess the process usually involves a lot of failure too. Great successes won't come before there has been failure. Michael Jordan is probably one of the most successful basketball players in the world. This is one of his famous quotes:

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Maybe achieving success is not what we've always thought it was.