If you are doing it right, the things you are about are way bigger than you. Risking forward you have found yourself out beyond your depth. Not too far beyond, but enough to remind you of your humanness and your frailty on a daily basis.
In this your strength is increasing, your muscles are developing, your savvy is being fine-tuned, your wisdoms are coming into their own, strategy is grounding you, yet, out of your depth you will feel your weakness. This, is exactly right and okay. For here, in the smack-dab-middle of something much bigger than you is where the magic happens.
All pretence and posturing is falling away with a mighty thud at all sides. The end of ourselves, the limits of our strengths, the boundaries upon our abilities, is the place you want to get to. If you need a false sense of strength to do your work then you are doing it wrong.
Pretence will not last you through the years. It is not a long-term solution of any sort. It only masquerades as strength while the sand beneath surely ebbs away.
But vulnerability, the ability to remain vulnerable, small-feeling, weakened in comparison to the task at hand and unsure in the midst of great work – this is genius. In this place you have not let your humanity (or perhaps we might say your pride and ego) get in the way of great things. Bravo I say.
Key in this place are the following: Have good people around you. Remain turned to Jesus – giving God the overwhelm every single day. Stay on task, remain firm, face like flint. Be good to yourself. Do what is required for restoration.
Then set out once more. Move beyond your depth. Take on just enough that you are forced to collaborate with others. Extend beyond what you think you can do. Not too much all at once but definitely more than what you think you are capable and definitely beyond your comfort zone.
Then, remain faithful. Finish that task at hand. Complete the work before you. Press through to a project carried through.
Take initiative. Follow your gut. Do what you know you are to do. Don’t wait for others to come to you, you go before them. Show up with something of value that blesses and grows and challenges – don’t just talk about it, make it happen.
Do it even if no one or nothing comes of it. Even if you have to do it alone. At the end of the day you have only yourself to face. What would you like to say to you twenty years down the road?
Do not cheapen your life by remaining in mediocrity. Go after something. Love greatly. Risk intentionally. Work heartily. Learn continually. Challenge yourself daily. Show up. Do the work required.
Live out of your depth. Let it become your new normal and nothing will be scary anymore.
Cyndy Lavoie 