I Will Embrace My Uniqueness : Part 2

Accept No Mediocre Life: Living Beyond Labels, Libels, and Limitations
by David Foster

(Page 2 of 5)

With our lips we proclaim God loves us, but our lives betray our confession. We live as though God's love for us is in some vague, abstract religious theory trapped in the words of an arcane hymnal. Yet God has demonstrated His great love for us in the story of the gospel. This is a love not of feelings but of action. It is a scandalous love in which our God sent His Son to die for people who couldn't be good without His love. British author G. K. Chesterton called the Christian life a "furious love affair." It took me a while to rip off the self-righteous label and embrace the transforming truth that God loves me in the morning sun and in the evening rain, without caution, regret, boundary, or breaking point. No matter what may come, He can't stop loving me. This is our hope and passion that we don't have to be good to be worthy of His grace, just open to embracing it.

Every six weeks my school sent a little card home to my parents to remind them of how average I was. They, in turn, displayed their displeasure by threatening me with all kinds of dreadful punishment. Mostly they explained that if I didn't work hard in school, it would be placed on my permanent record and follow me for the rest of my life. I wondered whether there was a government agency that followed you around wherever you went, recording everything you did onto your super secret, super bad permanent record. That was also how I grew up thinking of God. He had angels keeping every sin listed on your permanent record in heaven.

Sometimes my parents would tag-team in their effort to scare me onto the honor roll. They demanded A's and B's out loud, but I knew in their hearts they hoped for C's. The pressure to please was so strong that if I got C's and D's, I changed the D to a C before the grade card got home. My parents' excitement bordered on the hysteria of hitting the lottery. They were relieved their son was at least average. They were elated, but I was humiliated. Changing the grade on the card couldn't erase the disappointment I felt deep within. I knew I could do better, but motivation is hard to find when you're beige and bad. I wanted to do better, but I've never responded well to threats, name-calling, and humiliation. I've discovered nobody else does either.

I don't know if you've ever felt beige, bad, or boring. For me it's the feeling I don't fit in and I'm never going to be good at anything. What brand of life can an average, good-for-nothing, beige person expect? Who ever wooed and won a wife by saying, "Hey, baby, I'm a mediocre man, I've been looking for a mediocre woman, and you're the most mediocre woman I've seen so far. How about you and me get together? We'll have a mediocre marriage and a mediocre life. We'll live in a mediocre house and raise mediocre kids. We'll send 'em to mediocre schools so they, too, can be mediocre"? Not on your life! No one says that! But a lot of us feel trapped by it because of the old labels and lenses we were handed as kids.

Labels make you feel afraid of almost everything. If you feel weak, you're afraid of the strong. Those labeled average are often afraid and intimidated by the gifted and exceptional. That fear shrinks the soul and slumps the body. Shrinking is the way to be safe. If you get small enough, people won't be able to notice you even exist, and they'll stop comparing, critiquing, and criticizing you. The number one value in a post-9/11 world is, it seems to me, safety. People we don't know in places we can't pronounce are plotting to kill us. We're terrified of terrorists, yet there are already enough nuclear weapons in the hands of lunatics to destroy the world fifteen times over. There is no such thing as a fail-safe world or a small enough place to hide. You can't escape urban problems by fleeing to the suburbs, you can't drown domestic difficulty at the bottom of a bottle, and you can't defeat your inner demons by isolating yourself from God or the rest of the world.

Labels make us afraid because they not only obscure the truth about us, but also obscure the truth about God. The truth is, although there are lots of lunatics out there, there's a sovereign, good, and powerful God in control of the affairs of human beings. He will never let us destroy ourselves. As Stonewall Jackson was noted for saying, "I am as safe on the battlefield as I am in my own bed." But even if you could hide in a deep bunker underground, you would have succeeded only in digging your own grave if the world blows up.

God created you to live large with your face toward the sun. He gave you two legs and a backbone so you could stand erect and tall. Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University said, "It's hard to remember Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather to make us disciples, citizens of God's new age, a kingdom of surprise."1 God is aware of the dangers, and He is at the controls. He is big, bold, bodacious, and hot on your trail. Not to fry you, stamp you, or label you, but to love you, lift you, and liberate you.

My mother's favorite tactical complaint of me was, "Why can't you be more like your brother?" It seemed clear to me because I was not him! I got the feeling very early from home, school, and church, I was not enough now, and it was very likely I was never going to be enough in the future. And the cure for my unlucky lack of native talent and good looks was to do more, to achieve more, and to get more, so I would be more. I call it the tyranny of more. Someone asked Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire of a past generation, "How much is enough?" He said, "Just a little more!" This idea can be found even in Greek mythology. Sisyphus, the son of Aeolus, was founder of Corinth. He betrayed the secrets of the gods and was condemned to roll, for eternity, a huge boulder up a steep hill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom again just as it reached the top. The gods could think of no more dreadful punishment than that of futile and hopeless labor.

Hopeless is not an option because of two facts only you can face. You are today what your choices have made you. Not your mama, not your daddy, not your brother. You did not choose your labels, but only you can choose to remove the old lenses and look at your life from God's perspective. You are not responsible for all the "stuff " done to you. You shouldn't feel ashamed of what some halfhearted, small-minded person in your past said or did. But only you control what happens to what happened to you. The second bit of good news is, you can be better the moment you decide to be. The first declaration to make is, "I am loved right now as I am, and that is enough." That's freedom. God knows everything about you and loves you anyway. He will never love you more than He does right now, and He will never love you any less. That's grace.

Learning how to live in God's love, I think, is spending the rest of your life just saying, "God, how can I be the best at being me?" Instead of trying to be someone else, be the best you can be, but be that! Be yourself! Stop being ashamed of being who you are. Embracing your uniqueness starts with exchanging the lens of labels for the lens of love.

Copyright © 2005 by David Foster

About the Author

Dr. David Foster is founder and senior pastor of Bellevue Community Church in Nashville, Tennessee. He is known as a true street-smart communicator who uses humor and simple illustrations to help seker find God. He and his wife live in Nashville with their three daughters.