Tag: Mistakes

I Am Not Enough

D. Michl Lowe2 Comments

I’ve concluded that there is apparently something deeply unlikeable and untrustworthy about me. There is a reality of who I am that others must see, that I do not. Maybe those who truly care about me know. Maybe they have tried to tell me. Maybe they have tried to help me understand, and I have stuffed cotton in my ears and closed my eyes to their kindness. Maybe I have been willfully blind to my own shortcomings. Maybe I still am.

For the last couple of years, I had been through over twenty job interviews and had had no luck at all until just recently. For over ten years, I have been nominated for a leadership position but have never been voted into that position. And I don’t blame the voters; I believe they are voting truly and in good faith! It is myself that I see as a failure. It is an observation of my own persona. I would say I am lazy, but really, I don’t think that is it. I value being able to live with the money I make, but I struggle to see my efforts as valuable.

So, is this a depression, then? I assume so. I have heartache and am searching for passion and purpose. I would like to be a true writer, but I have never felt as though I am good enough to truly be called by the title author or writer. Am I proud of my books and writing? Yes, of course, but in the back of my mind, I continually downplay them and question their validity.

I love my family; they give me unending joy and satisfaction, but I feel inadequate at the task of being a father and husband as well. I wonder if this inadequate feeling comes from a lack of my ability to fully support them financially, but then again, maybe it goes beyond that.

I seek purpose in God but feel a failure there as well. I wrote a book in an attempt to harden my devotion and zeal for Christ, but even in all I have done, I feel a failure. As if I should have done more or not done enough. I understand there is continual growth in Christ, and I do see that growth within myself, but then I look back on where I was before. Back then, I thought I was wise, but truly, I was very foolish and didn’t know it. So how am I to believe I am now wise, knowing in ten years I may look back and see my current foolishness for what it is?

They call it a mid-life crisis, but the crisis is a realization of a lifelong inadequacy. How do you make a life worthy? How do you understand what you can change to make it better? There are some things you are locked into, some things that cannot be changed. How do you turn listlessness into motivation and purpose? I don’t trust myself to know that my answers are right.

So what am I to do? Am I meant to meander along, continuing to live in a miasma of stale living? Should I continue to be burdened by a raw and open self-inflicted wound to my ego? Or should I accept the truth, accept the truth that I am not good enough? That I am not worthy of praise? That I am not enough? Because I will never be enough. I can’t do it.

However, when I am weak—because I am weak—He is strong. When I am not enough—and I am not—He is enough. When I am lacking, and I am lacking, He is full and true. When I am down, and I have been down, He is more than enough to raise me up. When I am through with giving effort, and at times, I feel as though I am through, He is there to carry me on.

I am not enough, and I never will be. The reality is no one is enough. No one is truly able. We are all frail and slowly dying, the conscious dead. It is only through the light of Christ we become anything else. In truth, we are only ever meant to be the marionettes of God, allowing the Master to bring us to life and give us His purpose. Am I enough? Yes, but only because I am His. Do I have meaning? Yes, but only the meaning He brings to life within me?

I am the resurrected corpse, Lazarus. I’m stinking but smelling better as the light hits my gaunt face. Undecaying from my death – being brought back into the world of the living, color returning. It is not I who now lives, but Christ who has chosen to live within the destitution of my life, giving it a robust and full justification.

He is worthy, so I am worthy.

I Saved Over The Book I’m Writing! 😳

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

At the beginning of the week, I deleted my book. Well, to be clearer, I saved over it in Microsoft Word. As soon as it happened, I realized the error. Hours later, I couldn’t get it back. The whole thing was seemingly gone. I paced back and forth, extremely upset. It wasn’t anger at the computer or really anything other than anger at myself. It was my mistake. I thought that OneDrive had been backing up my documents for me, but it hadn’t. If I were a man who cursed, there would have been cursing.

After a while, I remembered I had uploaded a version of the book to Amazon as a test a while back. I logged in and downloaded the document. It was mostly complete, save for about two of the newest chapters and hours of editing. Another issue was that the document was not in Word, it was a PDF version. I can convert a PDF to Word, that’s not an issue, but the formatting would be all off, which it was. So, in the end, I had to take my blank book format and recopy the PDF page by page into the blank book document formatted how I do my books.

This entire week, I have been working on and off trying to get myself back to where I was on the project. Currently, I am working on the last chapter that I had deleted. Most of the edits have been re-completed now. While I was at it, I also did some major formatting that I had been meaning to do anyway. Since I was going page by page, I might as well get that done while I was at it. Near the beginning of the week, I sent my author friend Justin Crary, author of Archangel, a message detailing what had happened. He replied, “Look at it this way, what you write now will inevitably be better and if God intended it to happen, it will be exponentially better. Heck, even if He didn’t intend for it to happen. He works all things for good.”

I sent a message back to him, “-glare- there you go, bringing spiritual truth into my anger…” But he was right of course. As I am working on this last chapter of the book that I deleted, I already can tell it’s better. The narrative isn’t as rushed, which I often have trouble with. I am calmer in writing it and better paced. I feel good about my mistake. It isn’t clear to me if it was divine providence yet, but for all, I know it could be. Sometimes, God must take you by the scruff of the neck and tell you to slow down. To look at what you are doing and make sure it is honoring Him. I hope everything I write honors Him. Even the fun stuff, like a fantasy novel.

D. Michl Lowe