All By Myself

I feel like in our culture, the art of being independent and self-sufficient is paramount, sometimes to a fault. We see it in small things, like a one year old who grabs the spoon as you try to feed him in an effort to assert his autonomy, or in big ways like the quintessential "American Dream" story that is told where someone has a sorry lot in life, pulls himself up by his bootstraps, depends on no one else, and accomplishes some huge task. We praise students who buckle down and study hard to get good grades and people who set their mind to some fitness or weight loss goal and accomplish it. We tell kids that they can be anything they want to be if they'll only try. And I can't say that I am immune to this mindset. I remember taking a personality assessment in college and my number one characteristic was "achiever." That may be less true today than it was when I was a student, but I DO like to accomplish things all by myself. I like to take on a difficult task, stick with it, and come out on top. In fact, I may even look down on people who don't give the same value to achieving as I do. But lately this whole mindset has been rubbing me the wrong way.


I recently read a blog that talked about running. The author was using a parallel between training to run and taking on any goal in general. She said that the two main factors to consider were 1) resiliency, and 2) personal responsibility. Her point was that you aren't going to accomplish a goal if you aren't able to bounce back from failures and if you don't personally own it. She said (and the commenting readers seemed to agree) that when I set out to accomplish a goal, the only person who can make that dream come true or not is me. It's all up to me and how much effort I want to put in. I can do anything I set my mind to. And as I read through all of that, there was just this nagging thought in the back of my mind. Sure, that's the message our culture tells us...but I feel like the more I live the better I am able to assess myself, and that assessment isn't always that great. What if I CAN'T achieve anything I put my mind to? Or better yet, what if I don't want that to exactly be my goal?


While resiliency and personal responsibility are huge factors in life, I feel like if we only focus on those two things, we're shoving all of our eggs into one basket that is very far on the spectrum of "me me me" vs "I can't do it alone." And while sometimes our eggs will come out ok, I think that the "me me me" end of the spectrum is a pretty dangerous place for a basket of eggs. It seems like we're forgetting two other categories that would give us a more balanced view on things, and those would be "community" and "grace." When I have a goal to accomplish, I may wish to do it on my own, but more likely than not, I'm going to need other people to come around me to support me, cheer me on, give me guidance, stop me when I'm going at an unsustainable pace, teach me, advise me, etc. If I take the example of running in my own life, I definitely wouldn't be where I'm at if I didn't have people surrounding me, celebrating with me, keeping me going, giving me pointers, etc. I definitely wouldn't be having as much fun with it, and actually, I probably wouldn't be running at all if it wasn't for my running community around me. Sure it's taken responsibility and the ability to keep going to get to the point where I can run a 5K, but that has only been just a part of the whole story.


So how does grace fit into this? I think that our culture tells us that if we just do our best and try our hardest, we can accomplish anything, that it's all up to us and our effort. But sometimes it feels like you've done all you can and tried your hardest and that your best just isn't going to be good enough, but somehow, miraculously, it is. That's grace. And I think we should leave room for it. In fact, we should make room for it. I think that setting a goal and working towards it is a great thing, but there HAS to be some point in the process where you realize that you can't do it on your own. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that there has to come a point where you don't even want to do it on your own. I have a really hard time with that. Honestly, I can know in my mind that it is better to rely on God to accomplish whatever I want to accomplish, that having Him work through me will yield better results anyway, but nonetheless there is this (sometimes big) part of me that, like a defiant one year old, just wants to do it on my own! I want to feel good about something that *I* accomplished. But I think it is so much better to leave room for grace, for God to work in me. With Him I can do so much more than what I can do on my own. And, added bonus, if I'm relying on Him to accomplish something, then He can get the credit instead of me! (Imagine that!) Plus we of course have 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 which says, "9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." If Paul was so ready to embrace his weaknesses to let Christ work, maybe I should be too instead of being so concerned about proving what I can do on my own.


Real life example of grace at work: My first 5K was a few weekends ago. I woke up feeling pretty sick (not that unusual for me, especially when I'm nervous). I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to run, let alone get a good time. I started praying that God would give me the strength to run, and I knew that if I did well, it would be because I couldn't do it on my own. And guess what, the race went really well! I got a time that I was happy with and I felt really good during the whole run. I didn't even feel like I was going to pass out and/or die! I think that it was a perfect life lesson of a situation where I did my part and put in time and effort, but I realized that I needed to rely on God to get me through. I think it's so easy for me to give up on things because I don't think I have the ability to do them. Sure sometimes that might be an honest assessment of a situation that I shouldn't dive into, but sometimes maybe I just need to learn to rely on God and not only pick challenging things that I know I can do on my own.


So, like most things in life, I think that achieving and accomplishing and goal-realizing all come down to a balancing act. We shouldn't go too far on the spectrum and expect that our own individual efforts are all we have to rely upon. But we also shouldn't slide too far the other way and totally rely on grace and other people. I think there is a middle ground to be found where we realize that we have personal responsibility to our goals and keeping at them, but where that does not lead to pride and the disregard of the help and support that others can lend, or the grace and strength and ability that God is waiting to bestow if we will only admit that we can't do it alone. Oh to find that balance!!