Throwing the ruler away

I can't tell you how many times in the last few days I've despised myself for not measuring up (Did I say days? Heck, I've been doing that for weeks...months...years...decades, even.) It's like I see my life in negative space, only the failures register. I'm almost thirty. Where are all the flying cars? Why have I not written that symphony? Am I any closer to curing cancer? Where the heck is my happy little family? And let's not even mention the Olympics, which I am too old for by now anyway (unless I want to try the random cross-country skiing and shooting events). Makes you wonder why anyone cares to even talk to me.

Aren't you glad you don't live inside my head? You'd be dealing with this kind of stuff all the time.

Of course, now that I think about it, I can't quite persuade myself to believe that God thinks of me this way. I certainly don't value my students based on their personal accomplishments. No, I value them for the life that bubbles out in their pattering conversations and endless passions. I love their lopsided smiles and their home-grown left-field jokes. I can't get enough of their simple, unaffected affection. A small gesture of kindness from one student to another, and my frostbitten heart just melts. And if this is the way I feel about my students, limited creature that I am, how much more does God delight in me? If my scrappy attempts at living are enough to make God grin--God, the Creative Mind behind the Milky Way--who am I to complain? Apparently, I have been operating under a double standard. Either I am as valuable as my precious students, or they are as defective as myself. Maybe it's both.

So forget it. I'm done measuring. Weakness is not failure, it is what pulls us out of our cold castles of self-sufficiency to do for each other what we could never do for ourselves.

God made me this way on purpose.
He gave me this journey as a gift, and the thing you do when you get a gift is you say 'thank you.'
So, thank you, God. I know You do quality work.