Adulthood is hard. And by hard, I mean “hard”. We have metrics to know how to do and be good.

• At work, we have job descriptions and performance goals, projects that require (creative!) output that align with business goals and objectives, and meetings that require insightful contributions, and deadlines.
• In grad school, we know how to do good to get the A on a paper. (Well, Ion know about y’all but I sure did!) You write like a kindergartener aka you use the rubric as sentence starters. My first couple of papers in nursing school, I ain’t do that and my impeccable writing was scored not so peccable and ya girl got Cs. Ceeeeeeees!!! As confident as I am that my skin is made of honey and glows and sparkles in the sun, best believe I know I’m a good writer. But to “do well” in that space, I had to transition from the business report writing that I was doing in my job as an education program manager analyzing surveys and writing business reports about them to guide our programming and inform decision makers to… To writing like a whole kindergartener with boring, drab, dare I say raggedy sentence starters! I wanted the As so I complained for a stint, but once those As began rolling in, the complaints ceased. (Ha!)
• At any group fitness class (Pure Barre, OrangeTheory, Soul Cycle, deep water running– yes, I took that, too!), we know we’re doing good when we challenge ourselves to keep pace with the instructor– who’s above our level because why else would they be teaching it?!– and we find, deep within ourselves, that we do more than we realized we could.

And isn’t that true in each of these scenarios? That these metrics pull something out of us that we didn’t know was there? Or perhaps that we wouldn’t have unearthed without the metric laid bare and clear and available to us?

Back to my non-thesis thesis statement: Adulthood is hard. And by hard, I mean “hard”. We have metrics to know how to do good. But what about other areas of our lives?

In other areas of life, we *don’t* have a metric of well doing, so how do you hold space to create and do and live and simply be when you don’t know what steps to take? When you don’t have a metric to do good? To be well? How do you live in the mystery that is the unknown?

And that, my loves, is why we need God. Because I don’t know what I’m doing! Surely I gotta trust something when I don’t trust myself. And I thank God that I can trust Him, and that I learned to trust Him when I didn’t even trust myself. And there was a really, reaaaaally long time that I didn’t trust myself. Or anyone else. Because they made poor decisions on my behalf and I realized I relinquished my power when I let my family choose for me. But I gained so much! I gained the ability to blame them when they made poor choices for me. And soon enough, I decided to empower myself by making my own choices and choosing instead to live with the outcomes of them. (Outcomes, not consequences, because here at Extend Yourself Grace™️ we practice gentleness, babes! We’re not gonna use words with a negative connotation and judge ourselves, mkay?!) And when I couldn’t trust myself because… Well, I never had to!… I learned to lean on God:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6 New International Version

Strength in Surrender

I leaned into the mystery of not knowing by trusting God.

I started really small– I feel tired. Do I need a nap or do I need water (fun fact: one sign of dehydration is fatigue!)? There’s only one way to find out! Try one and if that doesn’t do it, try the other! I took these micro-actions to build trust in the God who created my body and in these divine intuitive thoughts, and began to trust in myself when I took action to carry them out.

I did a two way prayer the other day and wrote:

Small steps require big courage.

It’s in the not knowing that we come to know ourselves. And to know God.

And to be clear, I don’t want or need you to know my God as I know Him. I want you to know God as you need to know Him. For yourself! Like the relationship with any parent, each child has a completely unique, distinct relationship. Being that I’m the only “girl child”, my brothers have vastly different relationships with my parents than I do because gender roles and age differences and blah blah blah and yadda yadda yadda. But, they both have relationships with our parents! And that’s my hope in sharing about God. Not that you’d know Him as I know Him, but simply that you’ll know Him and his Goodness for yourself. Because baaaaby, God’s goodness is so good! If I can share a super easy, delicious, and quick chicken shawarma recipe that I just rediscovered with a sisterfriend, a cousin, aaand a coworker, , best believe Imma share the best of the best with you, too! (Also, should I share recipes on here? Because when I find one that slaps, as these young whippersnappers say, I will!)

I had a similar convo with a dear sisterfriend yesterday and she asked something similar: how do I hold fast when I don’t see the fruit? In other words, what do I do when I can’t see the output because the steps I’m taking are so small? When I haven’t even begun taking the small steps?

To my friend’s question, I answered: change the metrics! The fruit isn’t the metric, it can’t be the thing that you’re measuring because you just planted the seed. So since there’s no fruit, ask yourself things like: am I watering the soil? Uprooting weeds? Giving it adequate sunlight? The fruit will inevitably bear when we provide the necessary conditions for fruit to grow. What does that actually look like?? Welp, am I committing to taking one action towards my God-sized goal (her words that have since become mine!) and vision? Can/ will I discipline myself enough to do 15 minutes (which, btw, is only 1% of my day!) once a week? Can I surrender the discomfort of not knowing the outcome of the thing I’m doing when I’m doing it to the God I know and who knows me? Will I exercise self control– one of the fruits of the spirit? Will I exercise forbearance,– patient self control!– another fruit of the spirit? Surely, self control must be big important since it’s in there twice!

“Love is patient, love is kind.” Can I be loving with myself as I do the work? God calls us to be gentle, so can I be gentle with myself while I work? We do, after all, catch more flies with honey than vinegar. “Faith without works is dead.” Other translation say something like, “Show me your work and I’ll show you your faith!” Can I, will I, show up for myself how God wants me to? “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Will I persevere and endure to the end, to completion of my God-given vision? Will I do the things God is calling me to do so I can reach the maturity that awaits me, but only if and when I persevere? Only when I rest and do not quit when I grow weary?! “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

We need to lean into not knowing. We get to! It’s in the not knowing that we learn who we are, and who God is. It’s in the not knowing that we know our faith. That we grow it! Is who I am who I want to be?! Is who I am who God created me to be? Is who I am all who I can be? Is who I am who I want my nephew and baby cousins to be and clients and kiddos to be?! Is who I am what I want my legacy to be? What my legacy will be?

And if not, am I bold and courageous enough to do the work to change?

The We Version of the (Remixed) Serenity Prayer

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. May Your will, and ours be one, and may it be fun. Amen!

*RECORD SCRATCH*

Today, we need to throw some razzle on that dazzle. Instead of the Serenity Prayer, we end with a similar prayer of proclamation from the one and only Ms. Angela Davis:

And so it is. Amen!!!