When I was a little girl, we lived in a house that had a huge grass field in the pasture. I would go out there and plow through the tall grass and disappear. I would lay down in there and be invisible...no one could find me. I liked being invisible. I lived in a house of chaos and neglect. If I was invisible, no one could yell at me, hit me or hurt me. I could lay on my back in the grass and listen to the whisper of silence in the blades.
As an adult, I have come to equate the feeling of insignificance to the feeling of being invisible. I don't want to be invisible. I don't like it. I want to be noticed. I want to shake the world! I want to be the one at work to change a life, to save a family, to have an insight that changes the mind of someone who is lost. I want to make a difference. I want to be.....SIGNIFICANT!
Interestingly enough, God has allowed none of those things to happen to me. I sit in my beige cube day after day like a meatloaf, plow through tons of paperwork and then leave. I feel like the biggest fakity-faker in the world. I feel like a little girl trying to wear mommas shoes when I sit in meetings and trainings. In my mind, I don't make a difference.
The other day, I was doing my bible study and a stumbled across this quote by C.S. Lewis:
"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because she cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
Oh boy.
Why am I so willing to settle for less in my life? Why oh why do I willingly turn away from the staggering blessings that God offers me as His child in order to try and achieve something to glorify myself? God has given me all I need to have a great life...correction, an abundant life, yet I cling desperately to my mud pies! I feel insignificant because I don't see Him in my every day life. I have been a Christian for 24 years and yet, I still flounder around in my need to matter to everyone else and ignore the rest and peace that comes from trading my ambitions for my life for His will and ways.
Truth is, I always have and probably always will struggle with my self-esteem. The feeling of being "less than" is an old friend of mine. I know that God is working in me because I am recognizing this weakness and I am confessing it. I no longer want to be so easily satisfied with what I am able to conjure up on my own as a successful life. I want life...and I want it more abundantly.
