No More Lists

I wake up most mornings and go straight for it. Devotional. Prayer time. Something in me needs it done early, needs it checked off, before the day gets its hands on me.

And if I miss it, even by accident, even because I overslept or the morning ran away from me, I am hard on myself for the rest of the day. Not gently hard. Genuinely irritated with myself, like I failed some test before I've even had my tea.

I used to think that was discipline. Lately I am less sure.

I was supposed to be a good Christian girl growing up, which meant a specific kind of good. A certain way of behaving. A certain way of dressing. A certain way of talking, sitting, wanting things. I remember exactly what it felt like to get it right. Not pride, more like relief. I had met a need before anyone had to ask, and for a moment that made me safe. Good was never really about me. It was about whether I had managed everyone else well enough to earn my place.

For a while I was rebellious instead. I am not sure people always understood that the rebellion and the good girl were doing the same job. I was not really running from God. I was running from the list. I just did not have language yet for the difference between the two.

What I see now is, being good and being rebellious both kept me organized entirely around my parents' list. One of them obeyed it. The other one fought it. Neither one of them ever stopped long enough to notice it was never God's list at all.

I think that list followed me straight into my faith.

I am a servant most mornings. I show up early, I do the reading, I check the box, and some quiet part of me is grading the performance the whole time. 

I am a student some weeks. I want another book, another sermon, another framework, convinced that if I just understood Him a little more precisely, I would finally feel close to Him. 

And some days I am a sinner working overtime, cataloguing what I got wrong yesterday, trying to earn my way back to good standing before I have even said good morning.

A servant trying to perform. A student trying to learn. A sinner trying to improve. All three feel responsible. All three feel like faith. None of them, if I am fully honest, leave much room for just being near Him.

Paul seems to have already asked the question I never got around to.

You did not receive a spirit of slavery leading again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, "Abba, Father." Romans 8:15.

Not a spirit of performance. Not a spirit of comprehension. A spirit that calls out the way a child calls out, before there is anything to prove.

I keep catching myself praying inside the old system. Show up early. Do it well. Behave, or do not, but either way, orient the whole self around whether it counts. I built that system so young, I stopped remembering there was a time before it existed.

Which one are you running this morning? The servant, the student, or the sinner. Most of us know the answer before we finish asking.

If you want to go a little deeper, here are a few coaching reflections worth sitting with. Pick the one that lands.

Which of the three, servant, student, or sinner, do you default to when you feel far from God?

If today did not count toward anything, would you still show up?

If you know you are already accepted, what are you still trying to earn with your effort?

I do not know how to fully stop running the old system. But I noticed it this morning, halfway through my reading. And for a second, I simply sat there, instead of trying to finish it.

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Monselete Bowden, PCC | Writing for women of faith who are ready to hear themselves more clearly.