The last couple days I’ve felt overwhelmed by some of what lies ahead. From where I’m standing right now, certain things don’t seem possible. When I’m standing at the finish line of a race is not the time to ask me if I’m ready to sign up for another marathon; and I realized I felt like I was buckled over at the end of a sprint asking myself if I was ready for an ultra. Often after you’ve poured out a great bit, you need to recuperate before you can even consider attempting it again. The task ahead often isn’t as hard as it sometimes feels when you’re heavy with the weight of grief or exhaustion.
Too often I try to do for myself what I don’t have the capacity to do rather than allowing God room to do it for me. I was feeling overwhelmed by the fact that what (I think) is expected requires more of me than I am going to be able to deliver. I feel a need to defend my weakness; I feel shame that I’m not who or what I think I should be or who others want or expect me to be. I want to be what my people need me to be and it feels like failure when I’m not. But when I speak it outloud that I’m not enough, that I am overwhelmed and unequipped, when I name my inadequacies, then there is some freedom because at least we’re all on the same page rather than me pretending that I’m enough on my own.
God is enough; He alone can handle what it is coming and if I continue to place expectations on myself to be enough, to handle things a certain way, I will continue to be disappointed in myself when I fall short. I can keep trying to manage it on my own, or I can acknowledge that I am incapable of doing it on my own and be palms up with the nothing I have so God can give me what He knows I need, what only He can provide. But I’m realizing I need to move my eyes from my own empty hands to God and to all that He wants to do for me. He has an abundance of everything that I’m lacking. My resources will fall short. My energy and effort won’t sustain. But in my need, I can rely on God and be confident in His ability to do all that I’m afraid to even ask for. I want to rest in the confidence that God can provide and then take my hands off the reins and watch as He does it.