Growth

Giving Up

I come from a long line of people who persevere. (Less kind people may say we’re stubborn, obstinate or hard-headed, but we try not to listen to them. 🙂 ) Stick-to-it-ivness is highly valued in my family and throwing in the towel is not something you do lightly. In fact, growing up we were told it didn’t matter what grades we got as long as we tried are hardest. Settling for less than our best wasn’t an option. As long as it was up to us, we were going to achieve.

In a lot of ways, I believe these lessons were the right ones. So far life’s torrents hasn’t made any of us succumb to despair. We’ve all managed to survive – and every once in while, thrive. Life hasn’t always been easy, but we manage to push through. Giving up isn’t part of our bag of tricks. And although I believe that these lessons were the right ones, I’ve come to realize that there are other lessons that also must be learned. God does call us to give up – never on Him, but always on ourselves. He calls us to “lay down our life, pick up our cross and follow Him”, to give up worldly recognition, money and fame to answer the call that He has for us. He wants us to give up the right to call the shots, and choose to listen to His direction. We must lay aside our own power and pick up His yoke. Giving up what we believe we’re owed to embrace a grace we could never earn. Losing our lives, to have His. Sacrifice is never easy, but it’s required in pursuit of Him.

I may never understand why God calls me to give up the things in my life that I love. I may be asked to set aside the good in order to obtain the better. Oftentimes, the best can’t be seen on this side of Glory. And although giving up is never easy, it helps to know in Who’s hands I must fall.

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Purpose

Trapped

The other day I got stuck between two people having a conversation and mentioned in an offhanded remarked that I felt trapped. Someone asked if I meant like a fish in a net, and I affirmed that the feeling was similar. Later, as three people discussed something about which I had absolutely no frame of reference I stated that I felt like a fish out of water. (Both of these remarks prompted an interesting discussion about what kind of fish I would be. A discussion that I was ill-equipped to have.) Without exactly meaning to, i had created an interesting parallel. Both times I was equated with a fish. Both times the analogy was apt.

Whether a fish is trapped in a net or happens to find themselves on shore, they are not in the environment that God intended for them. All the things that fish were created to do are not possible in either of those circumstances. In the first, the fish has had outside forces conspire to remove it from its natural environment. There is very little that a fish can do to affect change once they are in the net; the idea is to avoid it. In the second situation, the fish itself has acted to get outside of God’s plans. Following what it thought was a better alternative created a situation in which it was unable to survive. The fish probably doesn’t intend for that to be the end result. Nevertheless, it is.

Sometimes I think humans are not that much wiser. We let outside forces surround us and prevent us from following God’s plans. Or, we ourselves think we know a better way, and so we jump out of the ocean of God’s goodness, intent that there is a better life for us on the sand. There never is. God made us for one purpose – to give Him glory. Any time we act on our own we’re supplanting that purpose with our own desires. Anytime we do that, we’re trapped. We experience bondage, not freedom. We experience death, not life. We seek to do our own thing, and than find that our own thing is not worth pursuing. We’ve been given everything we need to live the life we’re intended, if only we’re content to be what God’s called us.

I don’t know what fish I would be. I’m grateful that I don’t have to choose. I only hope that I can be the person that God intended and not let anything, whether outside forces or my own desires, prevent that.

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