One thing I know

Almost eleven years ago now I first came to Oxford as a fresh-faced first year. I was 18. And when I think back to 2004/5 me, there's just one thing that stands out: I was so young. So young. Just didn't know very much.  About anything.* 

18-year-old me was a tightly wound ball of anxious energy. I lived as if life was a one-night-only performance that would be the final verdict of what I was worth. Life was a troubling hourglass, turned over too soon - all its latent possibilities for joy and fulfilment trickling away. I had to get it right. 

That's how I used to think. I thought that my life would hinge on how much I knew and on how well I performed. I had this expectation that if I worked really hard, and ran hard after God then everything would work out more or less in sync with how I wanted it. I'd be able to avoid mess and pain. These were my unspoken assumptions, my intuitive theology. 

I was wrong. Hardly anything I imagined being in my future has turned out to be in it. Working hard and running hard after God did not protect me from illness, failure, loneliness and trauma. My intuitive theology has been exhaustively exposed as .... wrong.

You see, when I was 24 God trainwrecked my life. Pretty spectacularly. In the space of eleven months I went through two episodes of severe mental illness that were as sudden as they were terrifying.  I lost my job, I lost my house, I lost friends. I lost all sense that the world was safe. But the most mangled piece of the wreckage was me. Shame showed up - unannounced and unnameable, and drove angry splinters into me. Into the core of who I thought I was. I lost myself.

To me, the damage seemed irreversible. I was on the outside and I was stuck. I tried to act like everyone else - the ones who weren’t shameful - the ones who didn’t see themselves as scrap pieces of metal - but it never worked. I couldn't even remember the trainwreck without horror. I couldn’t shake off the shame. I couldn’t imagine ever being acceptable again. 

Four years on, I could tell you how while that experience broke my paradigm, that was nothing compared to how God’s kindness broke it. I could tell you the story of how God gave me a much better job, an incredible house, and many wonderful friends. I could tell you how his patience and gentleness has floored me time and time again - how he doesn’t break bruised reeds, even when the reed harbours a distress so deep that it will wail over its bruises for months and months and years and years.

But that’s not what I want to tell you. And if I could go back and have a heart-to-heart with 18-year-old me, it's not even what I would tell her.  Because we don't ever get the luxury of knowing the size and shape of our struggles ahead of time, anymore than we get to preview the precise brand and blend of blessings God has waiting for us. We can study and read and grow in wisdom but the kind of knowledge I was after back then - the kind of knowledge that allows you to control outcomes - the really interesting kind - doesn't belong to us.

So here's what I would say. To little-wide-eyed-new-to-Oxford Cat ...  and to you:

Please lay down this frantic need to get everything right.

There is only one thing you need to know and it's this: Jesus is enough.

He's enough. He's enough for all of your sin, he's enough for all of your mess and neediness.
He's enough for all of your failures and wrong - past, present and future.
He's enough - in all of your weakness and foolishness.
In all your forgetfulness and selfishness and childish disobedience, in all your unbelief - he is enough.
When you face the death of your dreams, he is enough.
When you're alone, bereft and bewildered, when you really have no idea how to pray or how any of God's promises can be working in your life - he is enough.
When you're overwhelmed and terrified and helpless, when the darkness does not lift, when your prayers go unanswered, when you get to the end of yourself - he is enough.
When you're ashamed, when you're broken, when your hurts and your pain bleed through to where everyone can see them and you feel excessive and exposed - he is enough.

Whatever you go through, whatever is done to you, whatever you do, wherever you go - he is enough.

Christ is enough. His love, his faithfulness, his forgiveness, his patience, his comfort, his presence is enough.

Life isn't about how you perform or how much you know. To live is Christ.

And he is enough.

*Particularly French grammar - but that's kind of another story.