Approaching forty, my life still feels like wet clay. I want to grow through and from my weaknesses.
But there’s an understanding buried beneath this seemingly-neutral question that influences more of our thinking than we like to acknowledge. This one question exposes more than a sincere desire to grow; it gives a picture of how we see the God under whose care we’re growing.
We speak of God as a shepherd to us who are weak and leaning and learning to trust—a Father—and yet we live under the weighty burden of getting it all right. It can leave us feeling mostly helpless and stuck and seemingly destined to mess it all up.
What am I doing wrong? This question we mutter under our breath or moan to our girlfriends—the one that dances in our heads when a day goes awry or our children are squirrelly or our career track gets derailed—leaves us alone and seeing God as distant and disappointed, merely here to coach us how to “get it right, already” so that our lives run smoothly.
It ends the conversation.
With this question, there is no conversation.
Formulas
What am I doing wrong comes from cloudy—read: false—thinking about who God is according to His Word and eliminates the thick and rich exchange with God that happens when we come, needy, and expect Him to Father us. Gently.
What am I doing wrong puts all the weight on the “right way”—that this nebulous, yet singular, “right” way to parent and to love our spouse and to build a home and to [fill in your blank] will somehow meet the needs of the deepest parts of us that are asking this question, that are feeling terribly weak and vulnerable and as if we’re forever failing.
It implies a vending machine answer from a stoic God and a life whose trajectory is best fulfilled by formula and a lack of failure.
What am I doing wrong exposes what we truly think about God.
God Is…
Can I tell you (can I tell me): He’s so different in His Word than what we often think in the deepest parts of us.
He’s tender, leading us with the understanding of our weak flesh but ever in the one-right-way, which is to Himself. He doesn’t scold when we cry to Him at the end of a hard day, barking answers in reply. He moves near. In. God’s ready arms are strong. They’re safe enough for our biggest meltdown and ready to lift and hold us through our very next step.
One “false move” isn’t the end of you, it’s His opportunity to invite you into the hidden, more-raw, conversation with Him that you’ve been craving.
Perhaps take a breather today and note when the last time was that you said “what am I doing wrong” and where are the places in your life that you’re asking this.
Instead, make a choice to let these places be the pause-and-climb-into-His-lap opportunities when you open His Word* for yourself and find the real truth about the Him, ’cause we all know our hearts can sometimes lie to us about who He is.
Instead let this be the place where He can gently Father you, teach you, lead you.
And that’s doing it right.
*For Your Continued Pursuit (dig a little deeper, both in your heart and in His Word): 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 | Psalm 34:18 | Psalm 119:28, 37 | Psalm 18:16-18, 28-30 | Matthew 9:9-13 {eoa}
Sara is a wife to Nate and a mother of five whose arms stretched wide across the expanse between the United States and Africa. After almost a decade of Christian life she was introduced to pain and perplexity and, ultimately, intimacy with Jesus. God met her and moved her when life stopped working for her. And out of the overflow of this perplexity, came her writing, both on her blog and in her book, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet, released October 2014 via Zondervan.
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Blog Link: http://everybitterthingissweet.com/
Book Link: http://everybitterthingissweet.com/book/
Instagram Link: http://instagram.com/everybitterthingissweet
Janet Perez Eckles 
Shawn Akers 
Abby Trivett