Not Good Enough

Keep your eyes on the Lord!

You will shine like the sun and never blush with shame.

Psalm 34:5

This verse has always gripped me, as I have always felt insufficient, like a failure in some area,  not good enough, not pretty enough, not competent enough, and on and on and on.

Because my constant companion has been these feelings of "not enough," shame has always been my constant companion, as well. I have needed to hide my insufficiencies so that no one would see them and shame me because of them.  

Blech.


This has led to some serious, constant, exhausting running-dancing-tapping-jumping to keep everyone from seeing all that is true about me -- that I actually am not "good enough" or "smart enough" or "pretty enough" to win the race of life. I am a failure in so very many ways. And what a relief it is to admit!

This last week, I read Isaiah 50:6-7. Again, I was gripped in a similar way as I have been gripped by Psalm 34:5. This passage, also, speaks of not being ashamed. It is a prophetic passage in which Isaiah is speaking for Jesus, and Jesus says this:

"I gave my back to those who strike Me,
And my cheeks to those who pluck out the beard:
I did not cover My face from humiliation and spitting.
For the Lord helps Me,
Therefore, I am not disgraced:
Therefore, I have set My face like flint,
And I know that I will not be ashamed."

Now, if anyone experienced true shaming, it was Christ. He was beaten, called a blasphemer, spat upon, His clothing stripped from Him, His beard (a symbol of manhood) ripped out . . . and yet He was not ashamed, not disgraced.

I have been thinking on this, asking the Lord for how this could be true. Not disgraced? Of course He was! Not ashamed? He well should have been. But these verses say that He was neither.

The reason He was not:

He knew who He was,
               Whose He was, and
                          what He was here to do.

(I use past tense, though He lives, as reference to His time here on earth.)

So, is the answer that easy for me? To know who I am, Whose I am, and what I'm here to do? If I know these things, will the shame, the guilt, the "you're not good enough" that others paint me with (and I paint myself with) -- with these seriously not stick to me?!?!

The short answer is "yes," but Psalm 34 gave a pretty clear and all-consuming prerequisite for this to sink into my heart from my head.

My eyes have to be on Him.

I can't just know in my head that "Jesus loves me" and that I'm His daughter and that I'm here to love Him and others more and more fully. THAT won't cut it. Head knowledge is usesless in matters of the heart, and my heart won't believe what it hasn't experienced. I have to experience this love He has for me. I have to taste His delight. Have to sense His pride that I'm His daughter.

I have to keep my eyes constantly on Him so that all that I'm hearing is His voice and not the voice of self-condemnation and the voices of the condemnation of others.

When Isaiah (and Luke in Luke 9:51) spoke of Jesus having His face set "like flint" -- this was a one-focus, nothing-interfering heartbeat and mindset.

In order to not let the "not good enough"s of the world stick to me, I have to only be hearing one voice -- His. The rest will not phase me as I listen only to Him.

Easy? No.
Worth crying out to Him for? Absolutely.

So, I pray. I cry out for Him to enable me to hear only His voice. It is certainly a life-long process, and some days are better than others. But He is answering. As I soak in Him, His presence, His truth, He is answering my heart's cry.


~~~~~~~~~


These are some of the truths I love to soak in:

My darling, you are lovely in every way.
Song of Solomon 4:7

You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. It will no longer be said of you, "Forsaken" . . . But you will be called, "My delight is in her" . . . For the Lord delights in you . . . For as a young man marries a virgin . . .and as the bridegoom rejoices over the bride, So your God will rejoice over you.
Isaiah 62:3-5

The Lord appeared to him from afar, saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love, Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness."
Jeremiah 31:3

The Lord your God wins victory after victory and is always with you. He celebrates and sings because of you, and he will refresh your life with his love."
Zephaniah 3:17

I, the Lord, will build a fence of thorns to block her path.
She will run after her lovers, but not catch them: she will search but not find them. Then she will say, "I'll return to my first husband. Life was better then."
I, the Lord, will lure you into the desert and speak gently to you.
Hosea 2:6-7,14

I am sure that nothing can separate us from God's love -- not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God's love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Romans 8:38-39

May your heart come awake to the One voice that speaks gently and lovingly all the time.

Feeling Abandoned

But I said, "The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me."
Isaiah 49:14

These words were first spoken by Isaiah for the people of Israel who were feeling completely forsaken by the Lord during their exile in Babylon. They had been conquered and carried away and were feeling like the Lord had completely forgotten that they were His people, that He had promised to protect and guide them and be with them. Valid thoughts by Israel.

And they are my thoughts, too.



I began to ponder when, exactly, it is that I feel most forsaken, most forgotten, most abandoned by God.

Similarly to Israel, my greatest moments of despair are when I have prayed and prayed for something (usually release from some source of pain) and He has not answered my prayer. OR when I have prayed and prayed for something to become a reality, and He has not answered that prayer. In short, I feel abandoned most when He doesn't do things my way and in my time.

Huh.

Looks like Israel and I have much in common. Just as they did not understand that their time of captivity in Babylon was, indeed, for their good, for their health, and for them to have an expanded and corrected view of God, so I do not understand the same things.

When pain comes into my life, I immediately cry foul. Pain cannot coexist with love in my paradigm.

But He is changing that.

I am coming to see that pain not only can exist with love, it must exist with love. Without pain comes no change, no growth, no expanded and corrected view of Him. He is intimate with me in my pain. It is precisely there that He exists.

Far from abandoning me to my pain, He is tenderly present there.

Isaiah 49 goes on to say in the next verses
"Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on  the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.
Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands."

How intimate is the presence of a nursing mother to her baby? The sweet baby is actually drawing life from his mommy at her breast. How could she possibly forget that child? (And anyone who has ever nursed a baby knows that within a few hours, your chest becomes extremely hard and painful if the child does not nurse -- it is physically impossible to forget the child you are nursing!)

But God says, even if that were to be able to happen, even so, I will never forget you. I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands -- and this is no tattoo on His palm (tattoos don't stay on the palm because of the high cellular turnover). This is a literal carving of my name into His palm -- a deep cutting, with blood, to get my name permanently there. He's invested in this journey with me, in this relationship with me. And He's not just in it for today or to get me through my current crisis. He is in this for the long haul -- to my death and then beyond my death into all eternity. His view of our relationship is much greater than mine often is. And each moment holds another revelation of His true Self to me, if I'm willing.

So, when I feel forsaken, abandoned, forgotten, has He forgotten me? No. It is impossible. What has abandoned me is my small view of Him. He has blown apart yet another of my "little gods" that I had inadvertently created. These little gods are ideas about Him (that are not true) that I worship instead of Him, that I hold onto instead of Him, that I use as ammunition against Him in my angry tirades at Him. But they only serve to block me from Him. Therein lies my feeling of abandonment. I have a shield against Him of my own creation. And I feel alone.

When I'm feeling alone, without His presence, what do I do? I pray. I ask Him to reveal the lie that I have believed about Him.
                   If God is truly good, truly loving, will He allow deep pain to touch my life? Yes.
                   If He cares about me, will He refuse to give me some things that I desperately desire? Yes.       
                   If He is present in my life, will He allow things to fall apart? Yes.

Sigh. I don't understand.

So, I ask Him for an expanded and corrected view of Him. I ask Him to show me how He is present to me, to re-frame my current circumstance and pain so that I may see Him accurately. Because He is there. He is as close as my next breath. He cannot forget me or be far off.

But my little gods easily can get blown apart in the face of His true self, His true working, His loving plan that I don't understand. And that is what He's all about -- destroying things which stand between His heart and mine beating as one.

Lord, give me the heart to see you more clearly and to see your true Self amidst my pain. I want to know You, not some smaller, controllable version of you that I have created.

Pain or not, I'm in this for the long haul.

For all eternity.

I'm in.

Undaunted Radiance

"Undaunted radiance is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can alter." -Oswald Chambers

I love the phrase "undaunted radiance."


It is nothing at all to do with the facial structure or skin tone.


Undaunted radiance is a fountain of glory springing up from a soul's center that is assured of His complete and total infatuation and delight.

Nothing can diminish  that sort of radiance, so it can stand in the face of heartbreak or monotony undaunted.

Undaunted.

You Are Not Alone

This is the song that He sang to me one night as I wrestled with my past, my fears for the future, my wounds that were aching. For those on a similar journey, may He sing to your heart as well.

You are not alone.

You are not alone.

Though your fears are rising high,

                                                     creeping like the tide,

                                                                                        listen. deep inside.

                                                                                                                    for it is there I reside.

You are not alone.

You are not alone.

When the darkness is so deep, I know that you can’t see

                                                                                       the light that is Me.

                                                       Just rest and be.

You are not alone.

You are not alone.

I am not afraid of the mess.                                        I am not afraid of the pain.

You are never too much.                                            I am not afraid of your rage.

                                                          Pour it out on me.

For when it’s out, you can see

                                        that the Hope, the Life, the Light you need

Is Me

Is Me

Is Me

You are not alone.

You are not alone.

What Made My Heart Happy from the 2011 Oscars

While not an incredibly remarkable Oscar year, I would have to say that it left me as satisfied as a meal a McDonald's -- no longer hungry, but wishing I had something better.

My favorite looks were from Marchesa, Vera Wang, and Vivienne Westwood.

I'll start with sweet Hailee Steinfeld. While not a fan of her performance in True Grit, the little girl in me loved her dress (not so much the shoes, though. A fourteen-year-old in five-inch spikes? YIKES! It is a bit like Princess meets Hooker).

I haven't been able to get this dress out of my mind for the last few days, and as I pondered why, I concluded that it was because this dress took me back to one of my earliest fashion memories -- Vera-Ellen in the film White Christmas. I always wanted  a dress like the ones she wore in her first dance scene with Danny Kaye. Sigh  . . .

Hailee somehow got the dress I always wanted as a little girl.

The other gown by Marchesa that I liked was worn by Halle Berry. What I liked about this gown on her was how the color of it highlighted her mocha skin tone. Oh, it makes my heart sing to see how the colors play off each other, the undertone of the dress picking up the tone of her skin. The tulle around the bust adds visual interest without making too much fuss, while the lower layers of tulle hearken back to Old Hollywood style -- but are saved from the unfortunate Marisa Tomei "archival" incident this year by their asymmetrical styling and lack of uniform layering. And, truly, I give a hearty thanks to Halle for dressing her beautiful body with grace and style (as women with far less this year smashed, squeezed and tortured their bodies into dresses that should not have been options. 'nuff said.)

The next dress is not one of my favorite looks, but rather an example of an amazing dress wearing the woman. Sandra Bullock is beautiful, absolutely beautiful, but this Vera Wang wore her this year. Instead of looking like glorious Sandra, she looks like Sandra playing the role of Hollywood Royalty. The shade of red -- instead of complimenting her skin tone -- made it appear pale and ghostly, highlighting her lips in a non-flattering way. She wears the difficulty of her past year with a regal grace and grounded savvy evident in her poise and face. I wish she had found a dress that allowed her to stand regally, instead of her dress.

My last noteworthy selection is from Vivienne Westwood, worn by Helen Mirren. Ms. Mirren makes my heart glow. As so many others in Hollywood botox, sculpt, cream and surgery to delay their inevitable fall, Ms. Mirren has shown that the greatest beauty comes from a life lived in each moment, from acceptance of who you are, from delight in beauty at any age. Every year I look forward to seeing what she selects because she is a woman of class and dignity who dresses her body in a way that expresses her high-view of her own personal worth.