I don't even know...

My roommates and I were talking tonight and somehow conversation turned to my trip to Chad. I was thinking about my time in the clinic, and all of a sudden I realized something I'm ashamed to say I hadn't thought of before.

I took pictures of a dying woman and her family.

Took pictures.

How did that family feel when I pulled out my camera in the middle of their reality, their pain, so I could share the pictures later with all my upper-middle-class friends and church-goers once I left? Was I weeping with those who a day later would weep for their mother? Was I mourning with those who were emotionally, financially, mentally destroyed by this loss? Was I really concerned for her or, rather, for how well my camera would catch the deep depressions in the emaciated face that could have been my mother's?

A few days later, I attended Masana's funeral. Her daughter sat with us and made us tea. She brought us to a place where we could sit in the shade. She gave us fans to cool ourselves with. And she sat and gave us company. How deeply I want to thank her now and apologize.

Still Failing... What's my motivation?

The last time I posted on this blog, I was feeling guilty for not studying enough for my physiology exam, thinking back to the moments in Chad, the reality of the luxury and privilege I live in and the poverty I saw while I was there. My well-intentioned guilt prompted me to write the last post, and as I leave yet another physiology exam hoping I didn't fail, it prompted me to look a little deeper. Why aren't my actions changing? What's my motivation?

I don't have much else to say besides this: Christ is sufficient. 

I could send myself on limitless guilt trips, dwell on all the ways I am not living up to the standard of holiness I am called to, listing all the resources I squander daily - which would be pretty lengthy. Or I could stuff the guilt, pull myself up by my bootstraps, and try it all again, falling on my bed from exhaustion as another busy, fruitless day passes by. I could struggle to be free from the sin that so easily entangles, struggle to see the future God has for me, struggle to see what in the world God had planned for my time in Chad. 

Or I could sit. 

I could rest in Christ's sufficiency. 

To some people, that solution seems like a passive excuse to sit on a couch all day and waste even more of my life. To be honest, I don't blame them for thinking that. I'm still trying to figure out what resting in Christ looks like from day to day (obviously figuratively, and full of Christianese vagueness … maybe in another post I'll rephrase as I learn more about it myself). But what I'm finding more and more is that as long as guilt is my motivator and my own willpower is my engine, my stamina in running the race set before me is slim to none. I barely start the race before I sputter and die.

The minute I take my eyes off of the gospel of Christ, I might as well be blindfolded.

I refuse to see the truth of what Christ has already done for me. I ignore the strength he has given me to conquer sin. I refuse to trust that he has already planned a future for me that is drawing me closer to him. And I forget that I am forgiven already, by Christ's death on the cross. 

And even in this, Christ is sufficient.

Please pray that God would continue to reveal that to me each day.