Dear Friends,
After multiple rounds of feedback, on Tuesday night, I sent in what I hope will be the final PDF version of my dissertation. The last hoop I need to get through is making sure everything is formatted correctly for publication. I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to hear if I still have to change a few things like margins and spacing or if my degree requirements are complete.
I’m having quite a mixed bag of feelings as I wait. I’m excited and grateful about completing a long-term goal and looking forward to catching up on other things and generally having more free time. I also really want people to read the dissertation and hope it will provoke conversations that will help me and others to grow in loving like Jesus. At the same time, I’m terrified for anyone to read it because I’m so aware, now that I’m calling it a finished product, of all of its inadequacies. There are so many ways it could be better, so many weaknesses and so many things I didn’t address. And I’m sure there are errors.
I think the errors are the scariest for me. When I was doing one last proof-reading, I decided to double check a few numbers. I found a spot where I wrote 4.6, but re-doing the math, I was getting 4.5. My stomach turned over. I did the simple calculation a bunch of times to make sure and changed 4.6 to 4.5. I must have just made a typo the first time. But the knot in my stomach didn’t go away. This mistake I was able to fix before anyone else noticed it. But, If that error was present all the way up until Tuesday without me noticing, what other errors are still present that I didn’t notice? This makes me feel an intense fear - a fear of shame. I don’t want anyone to see me make mistakes. And it seems inevitable that, if I let people read 341 pages of my writing, they will see me make mistakes. The two go together. If I want to say something at all, if I want to grow and help others grow, then I have to risk being wrong and risk being seen being wrong.
We all have a fear of having our mistakes and our failures seen by others. And this fear leaves us with a choice. We can try to hide our failings and never address them, letting them grow quietly in the dark, or we can let them show and hope to learn and grow.
1 John 1:5-7 (NIV) says,
"This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."
In God, there are no secrets. In the light, everything can be seen. In the light, we can’t hide our mistakes in the darkness. To walk with God, is to walk in his light. This means letting our mistakes be exposed, which is scary. But it also means having real relationship both with the God who loves us and with other people with whom we can share love. And it means letting our mistakes be forgiven as if they never happened and letting all the fear and shame that goes with them be washed away through the love and sacrifice of Jesus. It turns out that braving the light is always worth it, no matter how ashamed we may feel at the start. God will accept us, forgive us, and heal us.
A Prayer for Today:
God, help me to walk in the light. Let me be truthful and vulnerable and real. And in that place of truth, come and meet me. Heal me. Forgive me. Take away my fear and shame. Transform me. Make me each day more like you. Amen.
Love in Christ,
Michelle
