Left on the Curb
The Hidden Cost of Holding It All Together
As a child, I wasn’t taken to church, but when I was 10, a church bus came to my neighborhood one week for Vacation Bible School. I remember making a beanie cap from faux leather triangles that I stitched together. We also sang some songs and heard some Bible stories. But the experience had little-to-no impact on my life.
What if someone had come alongside me to teach me about Jesus and show me how to follow Him? What if someone had stayed to care for me and love me? Instead, there I was, with my beanie cap, crayons, and Jesus coloring book, alone on the curb, left by the bus.
The Trap of Self-Reliance
I kept that coloring-book version of Jesus for years. By the time I began attending church as an adult, I had already learned to manage life on my own—and I didn’t realize how that self-reliance would keep me from fully trusting Jesus.
I dutifully did all that I thought God expected of me, making my faith something I accomplished rather than a relationship I lived. Because I was still depending upon myself instead of God, my prayers were transactions: “God, if you do this, then I’ll do that.” I also didn’t trust God enough to forgive my failings, so I glossed over them.
I felt better about myself if I just kept working hard so I didn’t disappoint myself or anyone else. If I felt rejected, criticized, or not good enough, I would withdraw into rejection-paralysis for a bit. Then I would work all the more at being the best me I could be.
The Anxiety of the “Best Me”
From the outside, I looked kind, happy, and successful. But inside, I was filled with the anxiety that comes with an identity defined by self-reliance.
Because the “best me” never measured up to my standards, the anxiety never relented.
Then one morning, I was reading the Bible and a verse leapt off the page into my heart: “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). I remember thinking, “What? Nobody is good? Not them, not me? Then I don’t have to keep pretending to be good.”
The End of Transactional Faith
Relief washed over me as I realized that I didn’t have to depend on myself. I was finally free to trust God fully because I finally understood that God loves not the righteous people (there are none) but the broken. I can’t explain how I had missed knowing that in the five years I’d been reading the Bible. But those words of God led to spiritual transformation. I was no longer the rule-keeper pleasing the rule-giver, the dependable child pleasing the demanding Father.
I was the beloved.
Maybe you know that curb, too, the place where you learned to manage, perform, and stay strong. If you’ve been living like it all depends on you, maybe this is your time to know yourself as God’s beloved and trade the exhaustion of holding it all together for the radical freedom found in trusting Jesus to hold onto you.
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