For the Love of Comfort

For the last 20ish years of my life, I’ve been learning how to be a competent, productive member of society.  And I feel like I’ve been pretty successful at that.  So the question is, what do I do now that I’m in a place where 90% of my competency has been stripped away?

I moved to a new country just over a month ago and it has been one of my most humbling, difficult experiences of my life.  When I got here, my level of communication in Spanish was roughly that of a semi-literate toddler (or at least it felt that way to me!).  I couldn’t get around on my own, go to the grocery store, or hold a basic conversation with anyone, much less use any of the professional skills that I worked so hard to attain.  My first night in my new home, I was unsuccessful in figuring out how to get hot water from the shower, and I didn’t have the language skills to ask my host mom what to do.  It’s been a very humbling experience.  But it’s an experience that’s forced me to reevaluate the answers that I have assumed to be true for some important questions in my life.

The first question was this: Am I willing to extend to myself the same grace that God extends me?  In high school, I had a teacher comment, “Sometimes I think we expect more from you than God does.”  And that is certainly true for my expectations of myself.  Time and time again in these last few weeks, I’ve felt God nudging me, asking me to give myself grace when I can’t communicate what I so desperately want to, or when I need to take yet another nap because I’m just so tired, or when I’m crying over some absolutely stupid thing going wrong.

And every time that happens, I have to ask myself the second question: Where does my value come from?  Because, if I’m being honest, I act most of the time as though my value comes from my ability to contribute to the environment that I’m in.  I think that I’m valued for being productive, or generous, or kind, or some other attribute that benefits the community I’m a part of.  But the truth is that I’m valued by God because I am His.  Period.  And so it’s been important for me to recognize that the reason this season of feeling incompetent has been so difficult is because I was placing my worth in my competence, rather than in my permanent status as God’s beloved child.  I was never going to be competent enough to be worthy of love, but it was easy to convince myself that I could do just that when I was in an environment where I was pretty darn good at what I did.  And so it’s been quite the experience to have all that stripped away from me.  But I’ve been so blessed to have God remind me daily that I am loved for me, not my skills or abilities.  And it’s also been such a blessing to have some incredible new coworkers that have encouraged and grounded me in this season.

So to answer the original question…What do I do now that my competencies have been stripped away?  First, I take this beautiful opportunity to recognize the lies I’ve been believing and realign myself with God’s truth.  Then, I learn to give myself grace in the struggle (and recognize that it’s okay to admit I’m struggling!).  Finally, as I slowly relearn how to be a functioning human being in this new environment, I remind myself every day that I am loved because of who I am as God’s child, not for what I can do.