stumbling headlong after freedom

"It seemed like we, as women, have been should-ing all over ourselves." - Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

"We were never intended to be the center of the universe--to be God. If you try to be God, or organize life around yourself as God, you run against the grain of the universe. The universe won't back your being God. So you are frustrated." - E. Stanley Jones, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person

"Who told you that you were naked?" - Genesis 3:11

The issue of value has been extremely important to me in recent months. You could pretty much say it's the Nikki Gordy 2008 theme. I went through some major transitions in my life this year--graduating college, the break-up of a serious relationship, starting an MFA program and a campus ministry internship, hearing a call from God about ministry to homeless youth. It's no small thing to go from a Whole Foods workhorse in a steady relationship and in college to a single graduate student living off two internships and having less than an iota of certainty about what the future holds. It makes you think, for sure. It makes you stop and take a look around and ask yourself just where exactly your sense of identity is coming from, and the answer may surprise you.

For me, my sense of worth was coming from a lot of sources other than Jesus. I realized that I felt like I had greater value in life when I had a full-time job, a boyfriend, money in my savings account, and size 8 jeans. It's pretty terrible, but I had to admit it. I had to come to terms with the fact that I had this very specific set of principles that, to me, defined a successful life. I accumulated them through cultural influence, family values, and my own personal goals and desires. There were all these things that I felt I should be doing, and very specific time frames in which I should have them done.

This, of course, seeps from pragmatic things like money and jobs inward to the spiritual realm (not like it isn't all connected, but you know what I mean). I start criticizing my own relationship with God, telling myself where I should be spiritually, the incomparable prayer life I should have achieved by now, the sins I should have long since overcome. I become my own worst enemy as I start chip-chip-chipping away at the covering of grace, insisting that these religious gold stars should be the measuring stick of my value as a human being instead of the unconditional love of Jesus Christ.

I'm reading Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller right now, and in it he talks about the Genesis story in a pretty fresh way. He says that the crux of original sin was that humanity looked to something other than God to tell us who we are. We went against the grain of the universe, the entire fabric of Eden, by placing ourselves as the center of it and accepting Satan's twisted assessment of our identity: "You're inferior. You're worthless. Eat this, and you can gain worth. You can be wiser than God." When God confronts them afterward, He goes straight for the heart of the matter: "Who told you you were naked?" In other words, who told you there was something wrong with you?

I feel like I could spend a lifetime "improving" myself and still come up unfinished and unsatisfied. I don't want to fall into the trap of "shoulding" all over myself, of buying into the world's standards for what makes a successful career, a pretty girl, a good Christian. It's exhausting, and it's a wild goose chase that doesn't have a happy ending.

Instead of heaping hate and condemnation onto my own head, I'm going to accept God's invitation to a life of freedom--one where the sole rule, benchmark, and standard is this: Follow me.