Work in Progress

God is doing something so important in me. It's pretty awful, and I am so . . . hesitant, expectant, afraid, and joyful. 

 

The deepest fear that holds me, the lie that I insist on believing about how and who I was created to be, is more or less under a magnifying glass. My incessant failures are cropping up – it seems like every day that I admit to critical eyes and ears yet another mistake I've made. 

 

I've been told more that I am too hard on myself, but that's not the issue, really. Personal failure, so far as it affects and is apparent to those around me, rocks my world and destroys my false sense of security. I don't know how to cope in the wake of my own mistakes. 

He works with me, though. Sometimes over and over again on the same thing - like my dad, taking on the agonizing task of trying to help me understand geometry.

 

For years, I have had the occasional suspicion that I am spiritually disabled - that to have had the background and the upbringing that I have had, I should be so much further in life than I am. I should have learned so many things that only now are beginning to dawn on me. I'm a slow learner, but God is so good to me and so patient. I often feel that I am in God's school, and He, as my dad used to do, is teaching me lessons which are so horrible, but which turn out well in the end. 

 I pray, O Master, let me lie,
As on thy bench the favoured wood;
Thy saw, thy plane, thy chisel ply,
And work me into something good.