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Sometimes I feel like I take three spiritual steps forward and five backward. Do you get that same feeling? Sometimes it just looks like I’ll never make real progress, and I’m frequently so very disappointed in myself.
It’s bad enough other people let us down all the time, but it’s really difficult when we disappoint ourselves. Just recently I lost my patience with someone and raised my voice in anger. And a few minutes later as I calmed down and realized what I’d done, I just couldn’t believe I had allowed that to happen. I was so disappointed in myself. With all I know and all I teach to others, how could I fail so miserably?
I think it’s healthy for us to realize not only will others disappoint us, we’ll disappoint ourselves. We can’t even trust ourselves. And from this, we can learn to trust God even more. An ancient saint of God, Fenelon, wrote the following: “Do not be surprised at again finding yourself becoming sensitive, impatient, haughty and self-willed. You must be made to understand that this is your natural disposition, and without God’s grace, you will never be anything different.”
This is what we need to learn—that never will we be able to please God or ourselves on our own. C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: “Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just the power of always trying again. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.”[1]
If you’ve been disappointed in yourself lately, use it as a time to cure your illusions about yourself, and remember even at your best, you have nothing to offer God except your heart and your will, and at your weakest and your worst, he can transform you into a vessel for his glory.
[1] Lewis, C. S. (1952). Mere Christianity. Harpercollins Publishers. (Original work published 1952)