I am not the Victor

This week was not perfect: I did not refrain in all moments from old habits, nor did I "stay strong" in all moments of temptation (especially during funky mood swings). But in the midst of it all - tired, empty, confused - I learned something: The victory is not mine. 

In the midst of my weakness and failings, God showed up and told me that I'm not supposed to win: it's His victory. Not mine. I experience time and time again that I am not able to do it all. In fact, I can hardly do anything, and none of it is done well. The only thing I can do is show up. Maybe over time, I'll be able to put up a better fight. But even if I'm never spiritually strong, so long as I show up and do my best - however meager that may be - God will take care of me. His strength is made perfect in my weakness. If I were not so small, if I were not so incapable of doing anything well, I would not need Him so much.

It is this very dependency that I must lean into.

Now, I often heard catchy phrases about leaning into your littleness and acknowledging how dependant you are on God, but it never sank in.

"That's a lovely depiction of my depravity," I'd think.

"I wonder how that actually works and what it actually means?"

God is showing me what it means. 

It means that I do not exist for the sake of what I can do or accomplish.

It means that I am not strong enough to win every (if not any) battle. Hence the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. The victory is His. He has already won and will defeat His opponent crushingly on the day He comes to take me Home. There's this funny way in which His victory has already happened and is yet to come.

"Already" in that, He has died and risen from the dead, showing the devil that he will not prevail against Him.

"Yet to come" in that, for each individual coming to participate in His Death and Ressurection, it has to take place in the time and space we live in: I will not fully participate in His Victory until I myself have died and joined Him in His Kingdom. I am still journeying with far to go.

If our nature was not broken, we would not need a personal relationship with Christ the Physician. Experiencing our inabilities, experiencing our spiritual poverty, experiencing our weaknesses are signs that remind us that we need Christ. We need His infinite mercy. We need His unconditional love. Without Him, we will never be more than small, broken, poor creatures. It is only in participating in His Victory that we are victorious. It is only with His Strength that we are strong. It is only with His complete Union with God that we can be completely unified with our Merciful Father in Heaven.

Sitting in that poverty - coming to acknowledge it and know it fully - is so enlightening.

I only put two and two together yesterday and named my poverties of spirit: poverty of chastity, poverty of fortitude.

The sad part is that it took infidelity to our Lord to bring me face to face with my sin, call it what it is, and find exactly how I got there.

The beautiful part is that now I know the particular gifts of grace that I must ask for and this knowledge is so powerful.

Particular graces: you know when you ask for help, you're asking for help with a specific task that will attain a certain goal. Asking for help with a broad and general goal isn't as effective as asking for help with this thing in front of you.

Then someone gallant - or at least capable - comes to fill the gap, so to speak, between you and your goal.

That is what happens when you ask our Sweet and Generous Lord for a particular grace. He fills the gap between you and your goal in the present moment.

So if you're struggling with feeling like your lent hasn't been perfect and like you can't start fresh tomorrow because it's already ruined, sit with what threw it off track and ask our Lord for the specific grace that would help you amend that specific flaw getting in your way.

Be smart about it: break the struggle into the parts that all together overwhelm you and tackle them one at a time. God knows we are finite, He knows we're in time and that we take time. And guess what? He entered into our finite and temporal nature so that it might be filled with His Infinite Grace.

So ask Him for a particular grace.

He meets you where you are.

Love, Laney <3