This walk is fascinating to me. I feel like this tiny little baby sometimes, in the mind, because every single day is a lesson on the grandest of scales. Like I learn to walk every day. Blows my mind.

One of my favorite phrases in Scripture is a word from Paul. “O wretched man that I am!” I love it. I think he has his hands open and his eyes up in frustration and release. I hear you, Paul. Every single day.

It wrecks me one minute and makes me exhale in a laugh an hour later. One of my things is swinging on the pendulum of pride and self-deprecation. I know things! I know nothing and words fail. It’s quite silly, in fact. I can’t tell you how many times I leave a group of people and grab onto the steering wheel, shut my eyes for a few long seconds, and immediately think, “Pretty much every single word out of my mouth was…dumb. So, so dumb.” I have one of those incredibly illogical moments, like a toddler, when I think that if I just bury my face in my hands, no one will see me!

Yeah, no.

And I evaluate my words, again. And then, and then! Oh, this is the best “and then.” The Holy Spirit of the one true God floods my thoughts. And it’s impossibly comforting in all the ways that the world is not.

God does not say to me, “I believe in you.”

“You didn’t say anything dumb.”

“You are never dumb.”

If I’m feeling especially kind to myself, I use the word, “Goober.” He doesn’t deny that one, either.

He says, “Believe in Me.”

“I love you when you’re dumb.”

Now I have to stop myself and laugh. But folks, God really does love me when I’m dumb.

Seconds after a laugh, a clenched jaw, an overwhelmed soul. Do you realize what it means that He loves me when I am dumb?

I am so amazingly incorrigible! I cannot be what I want for the life of me. Wretched woman that I am. I just cannot. I cannot. I can’t, I can’t. In this life, I can’t. But He can. He can, He can, He can. He did. He did it already. He did the perfectness. He did all the good things and avoided completely all the dumbness and He wrapped that up on the cross and He gave His life to me! He gave His goodness to me. He covered me in His perfection, drowned me in His perfect love. He just did it all. He did it all and I can only nod my head in weak belief.

I love this death of self. This daily walk of losing pieces of me and finding Him. He is so much better than self-faith and self-aggrandizement. I have no confidence in me, but I have confidence in Him. He is so much enough that, each second He reminds me of that, I forget to care that I am not. And friend, this is not a lesson I seem to be able to learn in totality. He teaches me every time I leave a group of people, or whatever it is. He lets me feel the pain of my weakness so that I can find real rest in His strength.

Let me make this so clear. I don’t not believe in myself because I lack some arbitrary worldly confidence. I don’t believe in myself because I know, for a fact, that I am genuinely insufficient in myself. I cannot save me, I cannot perfect me, I cannot prosper me. I feel that it would be reckless to mince words with you on this one. My hope is Him alone. It’s in Him, and it is Him.

I don’t feel like I can explain this right (cue the “all the words I say are dumb”), but He is sovereign over this, too.

Let me put a bow on it, and get to the heart of the matter. It’s the same, every time. Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, came to the world in the flesh in order to save the wretched. He came to save. He came to save, perfect, set apart, redeem. He’s bought us back, paid that hefty prices of death, in order to one day retrieve us from this life of struggle (beautiful at times as it may be) and plant us eternally with Himself in a sin-untouched forever.

That is why Jessica genuinely being an absolute goober just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.

He does. His love for me does. I matter because He has labeled my worth as that of His own life.

 

Et cetera. Open the Book. He’ll tell you all about it.