I found myself wandering the other night. Everyone else was sleeping. I stood looking at the pantry slightly hungry and wondering what to eat and whether we had enough food. Then, I found myself staring at my tired face in the mirror, so I decided to wash it. Walking to my bedroom, I found myself surveying my books, which I had every motivation to read at the moment and no motivation at the same time. I decided to sit and found myself staring blankly at my email. Wandering.
Why?
Why do I wander? For so many years I’ve had an on again off again relationship with sleep. I realize there is fear there, when I am all but ready to hop into bed and try to sleep.
Why?
And then the thought floated to my mind.
Because I’m limited.
This is an amazing benefit of being created. But, I often don’t believe it to be so. I fight it. The very life of me lives against it. I pile my to do lists as high as the billowing clouds, and I carry that tower on my shoulders. I believe I should when I can’t. I expect so much of myself.
But I don’t really want to be unlimited. I am thankful not to be God.
Being limited is something to be thankful for.
Many years ago, my best friend told me something that I’ve never fully understood, though I’ve tried with an extreme amount of failing to apply,
“Before you go to bed, thank God for what you didn’t get done.”
I remember balking at what she’d said, groping in the dark of my mind to understand.
Why?
“Because it wasn’t meant to be done that day.”
I carry her words. And perhaps I understand them just a smidge more today.
I wander fighting my limitedness. Yet every weakness is to be embraced as yet another reason to depend on God.
Jen Wilkin gives a breathtaking overview of the attributes of God that are not like us in her book None Like Him. Her work strengthened in me the realization that when I fight my limited nature, when I try to be unlimited, I am sinning against the only Unlimited One.
Thank God I am limited. That I don’t have all the control of the universe. That I don’t have to watch in grief as people make a mess of their lives with sin instead of choosing what was best for them. I don’t know everything that is happening in the world at every moment. I’m sure I could not handle all the darkness I would see.
Only You can handle the heaps of babies shoveled into the streets of heaven every day through abortions. Only You can handle the grief and loss this rampant virus is spreading across the globe. Only You can handle the wretched things being done in the name of genetic research. Only You can bear up under the grief of it all, love us enough to patiently wait for more to turn to You, and be God and see the end and bring it.
I am limited. God is not.
He can carry all that I can’t today. And the coolest thing is: When I am weak, He is strong on my behalf. That is when I am truly strong.
For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:10
So, my prayer at end of day is this:
I thank you, God, for all that I did not finish today. It reminds me that I am limited and you are not. It reminds me that I need you. I am weak, but You are strong. Thank you that I am not enough. But you are.
More on the Topic of Sleep and Restlessnes
Photo adapted from Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash
Copyright © 2020 Angela Edmonds. All rights reserved.
Sip Life Slowly and Enjoy It 
2 thoughts on “I Am Not Enough”