Today marks my sixtieth birthday and I’m feeling loss and lost; love and loveliness. My life floating and fluctuating in unfamiliar and unexplored seas. For the majority of my life, I knew my purpose. Perform in school, persevere at work and plan for retirement. My societal service accomplished; my sense of self adrift.
The world is full of recommendations and requirements when you’re young and healthy, but with every passing year, those suggestions and their supporters shrink. This world, our world, uninterested in lived experience or earned learnings. Wisdom wasted for worldly whim and worthless weeping. Age becomes a burden, not a bestowed blessing from God.
At fifty-five, I decided I would no longer seek to gain the world only to lose my soul. Instead, I surrendered my ways to the Way. I subjected my truth to the Truth. I saved my life by submitting to the Life. I came to believe in a power much higher than I.
Beginning with that day of repentance and redemption, I’ve tried to make my life about not who I was, but who I can be. Who God calls me to be. Who God calls all of us to be; His children.
Like all sincere people of faith, my heart aims for godly perfection, and my heart fails me. The temptations and teases of this world haunt me and harm me and hurt those who I love. Even while understanding evil’s deceptive charm and deceitful conjure. My Prodigal faith believed that by my efforts and my exertions I can overcome what isn’t love.
Perfectionism is deviously deceptive because people of the Word genuinely want to be better, but being better doesn’t mean perfection. It accidentally assumes you can become perfect, but you can’t. A life of imperfectness will never lead to a life of perfectness.
We all miss the mark and we all fall short. The only path to the Father is through His Son; Jesus is the Way. By clinging to His vine, not ours, is the road to eternal life opened. We will never be perfect, but every one of us is invited to accept God’s generous gift of grace.
My late life revelation revealed my return to my childhood faith; if I believe enough, I will be made perfect. This same trap that ensnared my young faith-filled heart would again try to ensnare my old heart of found faith and it succeeded; somewhat. I have become a better person, but I’m still far (very far) from perfect.
With each failure to love God and neighbor, I would fail to love myself. What followed were feelings of disgust and disappointment. Feelings that I know aren’t from God. God is love.
And yet, religion and rulers, tell us otherwise. You fail because you lack faith. You fail because you lack will power. You fail because (INSERT).
Five years ago, I understood that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. That perfection is not possible for any person. That the need to compete with others in the world or feed my heart’s desire is a futile fallacy. That grace is a gift only when I cling to the Vine. I am what clings to the vine; I am not and will never be the vine.
Five years later, I understand and admit my brokenness as opposed to proving my perfection. I’m still learning to trust in God alone. I’m still learning to accept His gift of grace. I’m still learning all things are possible only through Him; not me and not any human.
No human has or will be able to overcome what is not love all the time. Only the love of God can save us from our own selfishness and our own self-destructiveness. Only the love of God can save us from the evil that seeps into self and society. Only the love of God can save me, I cannot save myself. I am broken by my own brokenness.
But I also have a hope at sixty I didn’t have when I was younger. When I thought I knew where I was going in life. I know God only wants good for me, for all people, but I live outside of Eden; for now. I’m finally learning that God’s grace is sufficient for me. His power is made perfect in my weakness and in my weaknesses, the power of Christ will rest upon me.
Peace. God loves you.
If you want to learn more about my spiritual journey, you can read or listen to my award-winning memoir Finding God in Vegas: A Gen X Spiritual Awakening; available on Amazon and all platforms in print, electronic or audio.