Letting it Down

"I'm sorry I let you down. But you let me down too."
-Baby (Dirty Dancing)

I got a text about needing to chat. Over the course of the next few days I began to wonder, what had I done? Because my immediate belief is that I've done something wrong and I will be chastised.

Deafening silence happens and I think, what did I do? What action or inaction did I take to cause this to happen.

It all feels very selfish to me. As if I'm focusing so inward I can't see outward anymore.
But at the same time I'm realizing that the outward focus was founded in desperation to hide from something, something in me that I saw as being without value. Something I believed everyone else saw too.

I didn't know I could be valued for simply being alive. I didn't know how to look for that value in Christ and not men or women around me. I still don't get it entirely.

I also didn't know how to share the blame. Even though I can articulate to you that it's not all my fault, that statistically speaking it's impossible for all the blame to lay at my feet I believe that had I been more; more perfect, more demure, more deferential, more humerous...more, that people wouldn't have left. I believe that were I more I would know the answer to the great mysteries of life and relationship.

I'm learning to believe that everyone feels this way to some degree. That no one has it as together as the expectations I place on them and myself. Yet I push forward, aiming for perfection and dying inside when I inevitably miss.

So I'm making peace with having to look inward for a little while; to figure out and uproot the sin and the doubt that I find and then move outward so the serving, the friendship, the love that I offer to others can be deeper, more genuine and less chaotic.

I know that I have let people down. It's the way life goes. But I'm just now realizing that when they let me down I can name it and not assume that I am somehow to blame. It's terrifying really, but freeing just the same.