Stuck in the middle

Have you ever had one of those moments (or days) when you are actually feeling pretty good and smart? Maybe you're frustrated with others for being too slow, in the way, or kind of out of it. Life is good for you, if not slightly frustrating.

And then it happens ...

The next minute your sitting with a friend and they are telling you about the challenges of production with the ABC engineering platform (huh?!), or you meet with your boss and he/she questions if you're sufficiently meeting the expectations of the evaluation committee (what?!) or any other multitude of experiences that makes you realize you don't even know what you don't know.

All of the sudden your world gets a lot bigger - and you feel a lot smaller.

I've had that happen a lot in my life. Enough that if I am starting to feel like I might have things together, it makes me nervous and I start to explore the unknown quadrants that I might be missing.

Maybe that's humility?

I've been humbled at times when I spend hours designing fancy fliers, writing complicated curriculum to be interrupted (ugh!) by someone who wants to meet. After chatting for a bit, I find out she wants to come to this program with fancy fliers and complex curriculum but she only has t-shirts and is afraid to come to church in a t-shirt.

My world just got bigger ... and I got smaller.

I have learned from these wake up calls and interruptions the irony of modern faith which challenges us. We seem to constantly be on a quest to "be better".  We want to weigh less, fit our skinny clothes, have less grey hair, a more toned midsection, whiter teeth, smoother skin ... and THEN ...

THEN we'll get our pictures taken, meet up with old friends, schedule a reunion, buy new clothes, go back to school, go to church ...

Yep, go to church.

That's the irony. We are trying to make ourselves look and feel better before we go to the place that has the power to transform us so that none of those things matter.

We will always be in the messy middle of life. We will always be between two jean sizes. Our teeth will always either lighter or darker yesterday than they are today. We are constantly changing. Hopefully we are smarter and more compassionate today than we were yesterday. And if we feel less so, maybe our world grew larger?

Any way you look at, we are always in the middle. We are in the middle, together.

You are perfect in your imperfection to a God who loves you for exactly who you are today and every day. Just as you are. You are more than enough for Him. And it doesn't matter your jean size, what type of shirt you wear and how smart you are. He loves you, in the middle.