I Didn't Do the Best I Could

 How can we talk openly about our lives and experiences? I think this is my driving need, my yearning, longing, deep desire. I want to write and share what is in me - for real. But I fear. I want to tell the truth of what I've known, seen, understood, and have yet to understand. And I freeze. There are other desires that lie buried in us - in me. One desire is that I can frame and shape my telling to in some way absolve myself of responsibility. To explain my own shortcomings. To make it look like even in my failings, I did the best I could. And there is a temptation to lie - to say, "I had this awful experience (or interaction or breakdown), but they were doing the best they could."

What if we could simply own up to the truth. I DIDN'T do the best I could.

So much of life seems to be about improving - my abilities, my status, my spirituality, my relationships, my diet - you name it - there is a beckoning from without and within: Be the best version of yourself. 

I hear it. I want that. Sort of. Until I don't. Until I long for another option. 

What bugs me about this? I'll tell you.

It's the pressure. What if, at the end of my day, or the end of my life - take your pick, I didn't show up as the best version of me? I'm hoping that overall, I do show up as the best version of me. But I'm realistic. Maybe a little pessimistic. I call that being realistic. 

I tire easily.

I live life like it's an uphill climb and a downward spiral all at once.

Please tell me I'm not the only one.

There's so much pressure to live life with no regrets.

I have not lived very long - 48 years so far. But I can honestly say, I DO have regrets. 

(I regret I didn't go to therapy sooner).

There are, of course, things I don't regret. 

For those of you who are younger reading this, I want to bear witness to the fact - the real, hard, undeniable truth - that God's grace is there for me even when I am not the best version of me. Even when, on a regular basis, I don't do the best I can.

Doing the best I can is a heavy yoke to bear. I could probably run a marathon given enough chutzpah, protein, and vacuum of other things occupying my attention and energies. And maybe that would be a kind of best version of me. But it isn't going to happen (anytime soon, or in this lifetime). Doing my best cannot be a standard I strive for.

I can't get away from the Biblical phrases echoing in my brain. I'm just a tad Scripture soaked, and I write off the cuff and the floating around in my head right now is the phrase, "There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." And, "Strive to enter that rest."

How I bless these words! 

I am freed from the compulsion of being the best me. 

"He makes everything beautiful in His time."

"He makes all things new."

"If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation."

"It is God Who works in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure."

I know, I'm breaking all hermeneutical rules by cherry-picking bits of God's words, probably out of context. There are robust Bible studies to be executed on each of these verses. Feel free to go to it.

I'm not writing a Bible study. I'm ruminating.

I am dependent. DE-PEN-DENT. Read that word slowly.

It is a liberating word to some. And to others it is crushing.

I'm the liberated. Maybe you're the one reading that and it bites just a little. I'll let that sit with you, while I revel in the freedom it means for me. At the same time, there's always this pendulum that any of us tends to weigh heavy on one side or the other. I tend to lethargy and the inertia of life keeping me from starting, completing, moving in a new direction. Others tend towards drivenness and a need to be the best selves they can be. 

I shed that drive somewhere between age 12 and 14. I make no joke here. It's true. Trying to be the best me was just so exhausting. The guilt. The pressure. The people-pleasing. The reliance on approval. The spiritual dead-weight. I couldn't survive long with these hanging over me. I admire those who survive longer - even a lifetime - in a constant struggle for doing the best. 

I look at what I've suffered, what I've gained, what I've journeyed through, and with my eye on the soul and inner life with God, I see I am becoming the self God ordains and is building me to be. Even in spite of my resistance. In spite of me not doing the best, I'm becoming His best. It's different, see? It's not about what I'm making me, but what He's making in me.

I offer up myself to Him and say, "What will you, what can you, make of such meagre clay?"

Because that's what I am - clay. Sometimes dried and needing some refreshment and softening through hydration - physical and spiritual. Sometimes stressed to the point of breaking. In those moments I can almost feel the tender Potter's hands taking me up in pieces and saying, "I'll wait til the warmth of my hands and the cool refreshing water of my Spirit brings you together again." You see, God is patient with me. He doesn't insist I come together all at once. He knows the rhythms of the soul - of MY soul. That I need longer than most. That the comfort of His Spirit is my deepest yearning. That the exhaustion of the "Doing My Best" is like a soul-parching dry wind that threatens to suck the life out of me.

So, when it comes to it, I haven't done the best I could. I bet you haven't either. We run our race - weary, courageous, cowardly, weak, wounded, sick and sore - some run it better than others I suppose. But who's to say? We won't know til we step on heaven's shores who ran it better. Looking back through history, I'm sure I'll be in the 'barely made it' end of the line - I mean, I have life's luxuries like running water, indoor plumbing and air conditioners in summer! When I think of how the very best people I know are so stellar today, and then compare them to the imagined saints of old who lived without these modern mood-soothers, I am sure the very most pious and sanctified modern person couldn't compare with those who were the best version of themselves in times past. Yes, I digress - maybe a minor point. But valid, nonetheless.

The point is not to compare or to evaluate. It is to come to rest, to joyful dependence, even to the point of 'I can't do this God, so You've got to help me! Help me find You, rest in You, then pick up what I can and take strength from Your love, receive the healing balm of Your Spirit, washing over me as water to the weary, and let me be tender clay in Your hands.' 

That's my prayer today. To know that even when I haven't done the best I could, there is a Redeemer Who did the best He could and that best took Him all the way to the cross for me. There is blessed hope in that, I tell you.

I rest in the Best HE could. And did.