Category: hard things

When My Best Isn’t Good Enough

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Another co-worker got promoted today.

When I read the news, my immediate instinct was to walk away from my computer screen. I went to the kitchen and mindlessly opened a can of cat food for the kitties. My fingers were cold and tingly as I grabbed their food bowls off the dish rack.

My colleague is a great worker, young and smart and hard-working, and the promotion is deserved. But it’s yet another painful reminder, as others surpass me in speed and status, how stuck I am despite my best effort.

I tend to think people should be rewarded in proportion to the amount of effort they give to their work. Hard workers deserve more than the lazies. Greater sacrifice deserves greater reward. It’s one of the reasons I’m prone to working myself to the bone – I’ve so often been enticed by status and recognition; to hear the words, “you’re great,” “there’s no one like you,” “you’re indispensable.”

But oh, how dispensable I am. Even on my hardest-working, near-bone-breaking, days.

Going through cancer and its aftermath, I’ve thought often about disability and how the playing field will never be level for those of us who have this cross to bear. No matter how hard we try or how much we sacrifice, the simple truth is that our disability diminishes our capacity, and we are physically and/or mentally unable to do the same amount of quality work in the same amount of time as those who do not have to carry these burdens.

Life isn’t fair.

I wish I could be a better person and celebrate those who are recognized for their unhindered, disability-free achievements.. I have hope that someday I will. But for now, I mostly hurt.

Because my best isn’t good enough.

I filled the cats’ food dishes and walked them over to their feeding spot, the kitties leading the way with cheerfully upright tails. As I watched them lap up their lunch and purr in contentment, I dug deeper into the pain I was feeling about my best not being good enough, and those words kept repeating in my head.

Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.

Good enough, for who?

Can my best be good enough for me? Because I know in my heart of hearts that my best is not for the approval of man, but for the glory of God.

Though my colleagues and bosses cannot appreciate my best efforts and more often than not cannot even see my sacrificial efforts to go beyond my call of duty – God sees. And when I work for him, striving for excellence for his glory only and in obedience to what he has given me to do in this season, with the strength and provision he provides me, I trust he is pleased. Even though my best only amounts to filthy rags in his holiness and perfection, he accepts my works of obedience with pleasure.

And that should be – will be – more than good enough for me.

November

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I woke up slowly this morning. Lying in the dark quiet that is my room at 4am, my brain crawling out of what felt like a thick, hazy dream, a sudden bright thought came to mind: November is finally over. A deep breath escaped from my gut through my lips. Relief— and—sadness washed over me.

You see, November used to be my favorite month.

It has pieces of so many of my favorite things: clear, crisp mornings; warm drinks and cozy introverting opportunities; the excitement of nearing holidays; and of course, those magnificent autumn leaves. November is gentle and delicious, intriguing yet subtle, leaving us wanting more while overwhelming with too much. so much to explore, riding on the coattails of its magic. If there were such a thing as a spirit month, November was mine. It‘s the month I‘d come alive.

I can’t pinpoint when its sparkle began to fade. All these things that make November magical to me are all still there—that hasn’t changed—but the lens through which I experience its magic has become scratched and soiled beyond repair, the clock I use to measure its days is stuck in time.

A week or so ago, I had this strange yet incredibly realistic dream. In my dream. Husbandman and I planned a trip out to California to visit a man my dad’s age, because he was grieving the loss of his daughter, Zoe. He was so thankful that we thought of him and anxiously waited for us to arrive. I woke up just after we got to California and saw his face.

The strange thing about this dream is that Zoe and her dad are real. I only of know them from a distance that‘s made possible through social media. Zoe, who was 5 years younger than me, was suffering through stage 4 breast cancer when the lines of our digital lives crossed years ago. It was through these same crossed lines that I came to learn two years ago that she’d passed away.

It was a hard week, the week that Zoe passed away. I was going through chemo then and it was hard to keep hope alive.

But getting back to my dream: what’s stranger about this dream is that I hadn’t thought about Zoe in at least a year, if not more. My brain had erased my memory of her during this pandemic year. The dream felt so random and meaningful in equal measure that I couldn’t shake it; I went on social media for the first time in months to check her account.

My jaw literally dropped. My dream was almost exactly on the anniversary of her passing.

It blows my mind how we carry these heavy, invisible things with us through life; how our minds keep track of pain and grief deep within our subconscious, then causing us to forget just enough to enable us to continue moving through life on this earth.

A few weeks ago, I lost another dear friend to cancer. My sweet friend Ashley passed away. She fought cancer with such an honest strength and smile. I can’t believe she’s gone. I can’t hug her or hear her soothing voice ever again.

To top it all off – November is my birthday month. The month celebrating my life is marred with the harsh stains of death.

Come, Lord Jesus – come.

The Great #COVID19LockInOf2020

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Son: Ughhhhhh! I don’t geeeeeeet iiiiiiiiiiit!
Me: Really? Because I literally just explained it to you three times in a row. Just now. Literally, three times in the past minute.

Of course, it would take something like a pandemic to force me into the role of homeschooling mom. I never thought either thing possible.

We are on Day 4 of our lock-in/homeschooling. We cover math, reading, handwriting, grammar, foreign language, and some music theory. It’s not easy; S hates making mistakes and can be a volatile little dude. You can imagine the choppy waters we sail on every day, from 10-11 and 2-3:30, when I’m trying to teach him something new. Or even just simply having him erase and re-write his “a” because it looks like a “q.”

Son: (erasing his mistake violently) This is the WORST thing EVER!
Me: (to myself, thinking about the next 24 days) With you 100%, buddy.

God bless the souls of all his teachers, past, present and future.

There have been some sweeter moments, though. We start our day with a morning walk around the neighborhood, and spring is in bloom. S and I bundle up and head out, hand in hand, and take it all in.

S: It’s just so amazing how God made all the animals and insects to know how to survive! Like, no one taught them how to fly, or collect food, or build their homes. They just know!
Me: Isn’t it awesome?
S: Yeah…I love nature!

And in moments like these, I’m thankful. Despite the hard things we’re walking through, we have eyes to see beauty and marvel at God’s hand in it all.

Real

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Tonight, his four-year-old self said the words I’ve been dreading to hear, the words I had not braced myself for and certainly had not expected to hear until, at least, puberty.

“You’re not my real parents. I miss my real parents.”

I can feel the blood draining from my face as I sit next to him, in the dark, as we drive home from dinner. I can’t breathe. It feels as if time suddenly froze as headlights graze over our faces and I scramble to find words, enough of the right ones to string into an appropriate sentence, a sentence that wouldn’t give away the hurt that has its bony fingers wrapped tight around my neck.

What do I say?

Headlights continue to cut in and out of our back row seat and I see tears stream down his cheeks as his face twists and contorts in his four-year-old effort to hide his pain. His restrained whimpers as he cries for his “real parents” in Korea churn a pain in my gut that I fear will explode. I’m thankful for the dark that covers us and in this moment, it is just the two of us, in a world of heart pain that we are desperately trying to hide from the other.

I lay my hand on his and tell him it’s okay to miss them and that I understand he is sad. I remind him that we are his real parents and always will be, but he rejects this truth.

We cry together in the dark as the headlights flash by, our tears the realest things we have to give to the night.

From the archives, 10/21/16