We can make ourselves whole only by accepting our partiality, by living within our limits, by being humans not trying to be gods.
~Wendell Berry
I have so many ideas and dreams for my art business that I can visualize unfolding in beautiful ways. But I wrestle. I am disappointed with how slowly things move. How slow I am. I hear this little taunting voice that whispers, “If you just hustle hard enough, you can achieve whatever you want.” And yet, I sense God speaking to me about limits. Not coincidentally, this word keeps popping up everywhere.
In his book Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer writes, “Our national myth is about the endless defiance of limits: opening the western frontier, breaking the speed of sound, dropping people on the moon… We refuse to take no for an answer. Part of me treasures the hopefulness of this American legacy. But when I consistently refuse to take no for an answer, I miss the vital clues to my identity…”
When we persist in defying our limits, we really are expecting ourselves to be superhuman, “trying to be gods” in the words of Wendell Berry. The truth is we simply cannot do it all and when we believe we can, we are set up for disappointment, anxiety, and shame.
Recently I read about Peter’s denial of Jesus. I always cringe when I imagine the rooster’s crowing and Peter’s shame. I so wish he would’ve chosen differently. But then this thought occurred to me…what if Peter needed to deny Jesus to see his own limitations? In the earlier accounts of Peter, we see a brash, arrogant, impulsive, and strong-willed man. He loved Jesus, but perhaps depended on himself and his abilities too much. Maybe Peter had bought into the lie that Jesus loved him for what he was able to do? Perhaps he needed to experience the love of Jesus in his brokenness and his sin, rather than in his giftedness.
Not surprisingly, Jesus shows us the way to embrace our limits. After the resurrection, he appears to the disciples, who had been hiding in fear, behind locked doors. Instead of coming in some sort of shiny-sparkly glory, Jesus embraces what is humble and ordinary about his resurrected (but still human) body, inviting them to look him over head to toe, touch his wounds, and give him some food.
So, what if we could trust God that our limitations might lead us to something even better? That when a door closes, we can trust that good will eventually come from that no? That listening to our limits leads us to become more whole and healthy people?