Star Charts and Backpacks

Our son Cooper was nearly four years old the day we met him for the first time. I think in my head I was flying to Africa to bring home my cuddly toddler, only to arrive and realize this toddler was a full-blown kid who had learned how to rule his roost at the orphanage. We’d had no input on any of the 1,400 days of his life so far, then—bam!—just like that, he was our son.

When we brought Coop back to our darling little cinder-block guest home in Rwanda, words poured out of him without any apparent concern that none of his new family in the room had any idea what he was saying. That first night I cooked “popeyes” for dinner on a tiny skillet. I grew up in Arkansas eating popeyes: over-medium eggs, with the yellow yolk poking out of a little hole in toast. Cooking them that night in Rwanda for our new person felt anything but familiar and nostalgic.

The typical thick porridge he ate in the orphanage didn’t require utensils, but popeyes pretty much do. When I reached to show him how the fork worked, he knocked it away. Zac quickly corrected him with words Coop couldn’t yet understand but in a tone that he apparently did. That child stood up and started waving his finger and preaching like he was in an Alabama church. Our strong-willed, gregarious new son was obviously familiar with a good old-fashioned southern scolding.

If this was a showdown of wills, I was pretty sure who would win. In view of our conviction not to spank our son who was trying to attach to even the idea of parents, we needed a way to motivate his cooperation.

We soon landed back home in the States, where he entered a world that he could not have begun to imagine during his years in an African orphanage. High-top shoes, Fanta slushes at Sonic, Pingu on repeat on Netflix, swimming pools with inflatable rafts that looked like sharks. But he had one obsession: my three bigger kids all had bikes, and Cooper wanted one. So I got online, printed a picture of the most epic bike any four-year-old had ever seen, and I made rows of squares with an arrow pointing to the bike. Whenever Coop did anything noteworthy—used the potty, used a fork, stayed in bed, shared his toys—he earned a metallic little star sticker toward that bike.

And I will be honest: it worked.

In fact, that star chart still works. He can’t do math to save his life until there is a light saber at the end of ten Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stickers. Then he can do long division in second grade. While this brings out the best in Coop’s behavior and performance, in some ways it also brings out the worst.

My Coop fights shame. Somewhere along the way in that Rwandan orphanage, Coop decided he was a bad kid. So on the days he earns a star, a bright crooked grin breaks out, as if this star proved he was wrong about himself and maybe he is good. But if he doesn’t land his star, his head drops, as if the finger-waving scoldings from the orphanage are all true. Yes, Coop wants enough stickers for his light saber, but this ache is bigger. Something in him strives to prove he is enough.

As a mama, I don’t want my kid to feel defined by stars or empty boxes, and yet we live in a world that issues gold stars and, more often, the finger-waving scolding shame.

We all have our own version of star charts, something we are trying to get approval for, from our parents, friends, spouses, kids, online acquaintances, coworkers, or even from God. Most of us carry that striving feeling all our lives.

Unrealistic expectations we impose on ourselves are set in motion from nearly the moment we come into the world. We learn young that the harder we work and the better we perform, the more rewards and applause we get. In school, the harder we work, the more approval we get. Our parents are on the sidelines of our lives cheering, “You got an A!” or frowning, “You got a C? What happened?” At work, those with the best performance usually get promoted.

We learn to want to win at everything. It isn’t bad or wrong; it’s just the way the world works. The benefit of these “charts” is that we do learn the principle of reaping and sowing. We learn that when we study, we make good grades. When we are a good friend, people are a good friend back. When we are generous and forgiving with our siblings, they are more likely to be generous and forgiving with us. These cause-and-effect life lessons are good to learn.

But the way we interact with our parents and our teachers and our bosses eventually makes its way into our spiritual lives. So often we try to relate to God through star charts—and we end up feeling shame or disappointment that our performance didn’t bring the outcome we wanted. We constantly try to work harder, to achieve more, to jump farther, to score higher in order to win His approval or His blessing. We end up relating to God with an underlying fear rather than full of expectant, childlike, joy-filled faith.

God does not work with star charts. He is not manipulated by our performance. My friend Sally, who is fighting breast cancer, did not in some way disappoint God and get cancer.

Sadly, because life is hard and most of us don’t feel like we are knocking it out of the park for God or anyone else, we live a bit afraid that when God looks our way, He is disappointed.

TRAVELING HEAVY

I wish my own journey from striving to freedom was as simple as six steps and a public confession, but the freedom to confess on that stage in that moment was built on a thousand other moments with God, moments where He invited me to stop striving.

For example, adoption comes with piles of paperwork and books. The paperwork you push through; the books often scare off anyone who’s feeling halfhearted about this way of growing a family.

They tell you about the potential challenges your child who has experienced trauma could face; there may be rages and food hoarding and sleep difficulties. And they emphasize how vital it is that as a new adoptive parent, you cope with all that just right.

We’d been home for several months and Coop’s English skills were coming along. But I noticed I felt as if I were carrying a heavy backpack. A new pressure was growing in me. Cooper’s needs were unlike the needs I’d grown familiar with in my other kids, so parenting the way I’d always done was actually hurting him, pushing him away.

One day I yelled. Yep. Lose-your-mind kind of screaming at our darling, confused, doing-his-best-to-adjust-to-a-whole-new-world little boy. Not good for attachment bonding.

I remember the trailer for the movie Wild, seeing Reese Witherspoon’s character carrying a backpack as big or bigger than she is. That is exactly what my life felt like.

I deeply wanted to be enough for my son; I wanted and needed him to feel loved. Adding to that weight was the familiar struggle with fear of people and the fact that I had been to Africa. Seeing Africa—both the beauty and the need—wrecked me forever. I couldn’t escape images of boys Cooper’s age running beside me, no parents in sight, with bellies distended, begging us for bonbons, meaning “candy.”

I was drowning in all the need right in front of me but haunted by needs around the globe.

I found myself caught up in fear of God. Fear I would let Him down, fear I wasn’t doing enough for those He loves. At the end of my life and at the end of the day, I just wanted to be enough for Him.

I’d begun to think, God is so real and there is so much need in the world and it all feels so important and like we might screw up His plans or miss His plans. An urgency began to consume my life and add weight to my deep-seated “not-enoughness.” Friends who had also adopted weighed in with their strong opinions about parenting methods. Others we love wondered if we were crazy for disrupting our lives like this and worried aloud that his needs may distract us from giving our other kids all they need. Their words fed a growing narrative in my mind: I could mess this up. It all depends on me.

My backpack was so heavy, all I could think about was when I could take it off. But because this pack contained some good things, God things, I didn’t even know if it was all right to take it off. I had strapped onto my shoulders the mission of God in this world.

I wanted Him to be proud of me.

Do you ever feel this way? Do you know that this is not even a thought in God’s mind? This is not how the heavenly Father works. Sometimes earthly fathers expect us to earn their approval. But God doesn’t work this way.

In Jeremiah He says, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”¹

God is not after great performances or great movements. He is after us!

God already knows we are not enough, but He’s not asking us to be. We are the ones who have chosen to walk through the desert with enormous packs strapped to our backs full of everything but water. As if the kingdom of God were held up or together by us.

So I propose a great experiment. What if together we name the junk we are carrying around and figure out what to do with it? What if we name our limitations, our fears, our imperfections, our striving, our sins, rather than try to escape them? Now take some time with this. Really stop and reflect and ask yourself these questions. It may help to sit down with a friend and work through them.

What is heavy for you right now?

What is hard?

Why is it difficult?

What do you find yourself thinking about most?

What are you sad about?

What are you worried about?

What are you afraid of?

Can you identify some things you may be carrying?

I am going to give you all kinds of lovely suggestions, because if you are anything like me, you rarely stop long enough to even know how you are, much less identify what is wrong.

Name what’s in your backpack.

Maybe it is in one of the following categories.

Fear

I don’t know what I have to offer.

I don’t know what I should do.

I feel helpless.

I am too old.

I am too young.

I am going to miss important things.

I am going to fail.

I am going to look like a fool.

People will get mad.

I won’t be liked.

I am not strong enough.

My biggest fear is __________.

Difficulties

My life feels out of control.

My child is rebelling.

I can’t do this.

I don’t want to be a burden.

I am divorced.

I am sick.

People I love are suffering.

I don’t want to appear weak.

My most difficult circumstance is __________.

Pressures

I can’t measure up.

I am too weak.

I feel worthless.

I feel like it is up to me.

If I don’t do it, it won’t get done.

I don’t know how to get it all done.

I am too busy.

There is too much to do, so why try?

I feel unlovable.

I feel like people love me for what I do and not who I am.

I don’t have enough faith.

What if I fail?

My biggest pressure is ________________.

Shame

I have messed up.

I’m not worthy.

I hope no one ever discovers the truth.

I can’t believe I let that happen.

If people knew what I have done, they would reject me.

I am disqualified.

I have to hide.

I can’t lead or move forward from this.

I am a fraud.

My biggest mistake that haunts me is _______________.

We begin by naming because we trust that God is enough for whatever we are about to say. God is not surprised by our failures and disappointments and baggage. They are actually reminders of our need for God. He will use whatever means possible just to get to you and to be with you.

Name where you are not enough, where you are inadequate, and the junk you are carrying. Right now. Name it. Confess it. Call a good friend and talk about it. You have to admit you are wearing a backpack before you can find the freedom to take it off.

I began to have victory over my addiction to people’s approval when I finally started calling my people pleasing sin. When I realized I had been worshipping people instead of God, that broke me. As I saw it for the idolatry it was, I lost my appetite for it.

Perhaps you, too, are carrying a burden that is flat-out sin. And sin requires repentance, not just confession. Repentance is a turning away from. Flee from it. Even if the burden is hidden in your thought life, Scripture calls us to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”² We fight sin. And we receive grace and we believe grace is enough to eradicate it.

But maybe your burden involves suffering in some way that is not in your control. Let me begin by saying I am so sorry. You may be facing illness or a spouse cheating on you or worse. It may feel like you can’t take it off or lay it down. It is just with you and there may be no sign of it working out on this earth.

I have walked through unthinkable suffering with my best friend and my sister in the past three years. I hate suffering! But I have seen God be good in the midst of it. Jesus is better than happy stories that work out perfectly. He has been enough for the people closest to me, so much so that I can say confidently, He is enough for you too.

The enemy often pushes us out so far in the desert, we wonder if we will ever know joy again. But God promises, “I will lead you beside still waters. I will restore your soul.”³

SO NOW WHAT?

Now before you go and feel guilty for whatever your backpack contains, just stop. It’s bad enough that we lug around these packs without adding our guilt for doing so.

God forgives our sin immediately and once and for all. He does not hold resentments or keep a tally of our wrongs. Psalm 103:12 says that the love of God is so great and vast that He has “removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.”⁴ This is such a hard concept for us to embrace because we are grudge holders. We label and define people based on their sin. If someone cheats, then he is a cheater. If she lies, then she is a liar.

But with God, when a sin has been confessed, it is forgiven once and for all. There is no labeling; there is not even a reminder of our past mistakes. There are no reparations for us to make because nothing in us earns His grace. It is offered free. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Any thought that tells us to lug our backpacks of shame and guilt is a direct attempt from the enemy to plant the suspicion that we aren’t really forgiven.

Your eyes may still feel glued to the carpet with fear and shame, but God has a sneaky way of not only forgiving our past sin but redeeming the choices we thought had ruined everything. Goodness, I like Him.

One night recently in Austin, at the close of our Bible study, a woman I’ll call Joanna came and found me. She walked up to me with her eyes glued to the carpet. Her dark messy hair was haphazardly pulled back out of her face. She was wearing an old, faded T-shirt that was two sizes too big. Something about her—actually almost everything about her—looked defeated.

In an effort to get to her eyes and to whatever heavy thing this woman was shouldering, I squatted down on the stairs at the front of the church. She followed my lead and sat down, but continued to look at the floor. She said, “I wanted you to know I just told my small group something that I have never told anybody in my whole life that happened to me when I was fourteen.”

My heart quickly divided in half. One half broke because my guess is that Joanna is in her early forties. That means whatever just came out, she has been carrying for nearly three decades of her life. The other half of my heart flooded with hope that this could be the moment her life shifts. It could be the start of freedom.

My eyes stung with tears as she shared how terrified she felt at the thought that near strangers now know her deepest secret, a secret her husband doesn’t even know. I couldn’t land on what was ahead for her, so the only next right move seemed to be to grab her hands and talk to God. After amens, I encouraged her to find a counselor and to consider telling her husband about this heavy thing she had been carrying alone. I still don’t know what Joanna shared that night. Maybe it was abuse, maybe it was an abortion…I don’t know and I didn’t need to know. But someone did.

Three weeks later, Joanna ran up to me and looked directly in my eyes. She told me about counseling. She told me about her husband, about his grace and how he wept when she shared this burden with him. She said, “Jennie, my husband and I have never been closer. I have never been more free.”

Her entire physical appearance had changed in three weeks. Everything about her looked free.

But she had to name what she was carrying before she could ever get free of it. And you and I have to do the same if we want to ditch our backpacks.

I want to be clear: This will take courage. Because to get to the place where God can be enough, we have to first admit we aren’t. Pretending we are okay—that is how a lot of us are making life work. With that illusion gone, we might have to live needing God.

And it might be hard.

Strike that. It is hard.

No more performing. No more pretending. No more proving ourselves.

It sounds good—until we have to say out loud the things we barely even want to come to mind.

We struggle in the dark with our backpacks filled with weights that we never name. And we’re doing it alone. And we’re doing it disconnected rather than looking into each other’s eyes and saying, “I’m dying here.” If we could just utter the words, somebody could speak the truth of grace over us. They could remind us of God and His love for us and pray for us and, for goodness’ sake, fight for us.

Instead, we are letting the enemy take us down.

So my prayer is that you and I would believe rightly about God and about ourselves. Then can you imagine what will happen?

I can tell you what will happen: you’ll start to be free and you’ll start to love God again and you’ll start to love your life again, no matter what it brings. It isn’t easy, but it sure is a lot less hard. Maybe the reason you aren’t free is that you are trying so hard?

What if we tore up our star charts and threw them away?

What if we quit performing?

What if we learned to let go of what we cannot control?

What if we started enjoying our life and our God again?

What if we stopped doing things for God and started doing them with God?

When we make that shift, we will be different. Because when we are with Him, we see Him for who He is and He changes us.

This is a journey into greater faith. Believing God and who He says He is and who He says we are. It is a journey into a life of not trying so hard. It is a road to enjoying our abundant God rather than working so hard for Him.

When God freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, He took them on a journey into the desert and eventually through the desert. But whether His people were in Egypt, the desert, or the Promised Land, the goal of our God was always the same:

He was freeing them to know Him.

He was freeing them to worship Him.

He was freeing them to love Him.

He was freeing them to be with Him.

Just as He wants to free you and He wants to free me from our striving, from our burden, from the ache of not-enoughness.

Do you know this ache?

I’ve carried it as a gaping hole in my heart since childhood. A thirst I carried into all my relationships, into all my work, into all my thoughts. I thirsted to measure up. When I did, I drank it in and couldn’t get enough. It’s funny how drinking in the wrong things only makes you thirstier.

I carried the thirst into marriage. When Zac and I would have normal married-people fights, I would crumble, experiencing an extreme reaction, all because of a relationship that couldn’t satisfy me. My frustrated determination to live up to my parents’ expectations, to teachers’ expectations, to coaches’ expectations, to people’s expectations, to Zac’s expectations eventually moved to mistakenly thinking I could not measure up to God’s expectations. So I began to avoid the only place where that thirst could be quenched.

It may be different for you, but I see the desperation in so many eyes. We can’t go our entire lives with burdens we won’t share; they are taking us down.

Jesus didn’t come just so you would know about grace—or even so you would know about God. He came so that you would drink in grace and be filled with God. Emptying out whatever it is you fear that would keep Him from delighting in you somehow makes room for all of Him to come crashing in…

Cleansing you.

Filling you.

Freeing you.

Empowering you.

Jesus didn’t come desperately needing something from us; He came to be with us.

Immanuel. God with us.

I need to stop here and be so clear because perhaps you don’t know exactly why it is we do not have to measure up to God’s perfect standard.

Jesus Christ, God’s Son, did for us what we could never do for ourselves: He measured up. He was the perfect sacrifice. He is the only One to have ever satisfied all God asks to be in relationship with Him. And instead of keeping that for Himself, He trades places with us. He trades His enoughness for our scarcity and lack. He took on all of our sin and all of our not-enoughness, and put them to death when He was put to death on the cross. And for those of us who have named and turned from our sin and have trusted Him alone for salvation, we now not only measure up before a perfect God, but we are beloved by Him.

It is a story I do not ever get over.

We don’t have to perform for a God who already adores us as His adopted children. I am not saying we turn apathetic and lazy, but I am saying we get to stop trying to impress God. God wants to be with us. And that reality pressed deep into us produces anything but apathy. Being wholly, relentlessly loved never makes someone apathetic. But it erases any need for earning gold stars.

Cooper thinks his stars matter to me, and sure, I am pleased when my children obey or succeed. But what he can’t comprehend is that I am just as utterly smitten with him on his worst days as I am on his best ones. He has me. I may lose my temper, but that kid has woven his way into the deepest parts of me. He is my son, and his performance and achievements or lack thereof could never add to or strip one ounce of my love for him.

Perhaps intellectually you already know this about God’s love. You know He loves you, but you have trouble experiencing His love, believing His love is really as steadfast as He says. Then take that disconnect, that doubt, straight to Him in prayer and open conversation and confession. It is when we get truly honest with God and ourselves that He can begin to heal and restore the holes in our hearts.

When we see ourselves the way God sees us, we don’t have to strive.

Being near to God doesn’t produce pressure or legalism; it produces worship.

FACING THE SCARY, BEAUTIFUL TRUTH

A couple years ago at the start of our second IF:Gathering, I stood in the dark at the back of the theater. I’d just delivered one of the shakiest talks of my life, barely getting through it. What few knew was why it was shaky.

In the ten days leading up to that moment, I’d endured a full-on assault.

It began with a rash that announced the arrival of shingles, followed by an unrelated infection. In the midst of my misery, I was still naively and stupidly shaking my fist at the devil, saying, “Bring it.” Well, he apparently appreciated the challenge, and days before IF, I was on my bathroom floor throwing up from one of the worst pains I have ever felt. Let’s just say it made me wish for labor and delivery. Nope, strike that. It made me wish for death.

A cyst had ruptured in my abdomen.

In the midst of all that came calls about a crisis within our organization, a crisis that propelled me into some of the most difficult leadership conversations I’d ever had—and trust me, I’ve had some doozies. So from my bed, in crazy pain and loaded with a lot of medication, I endured dozens of difficult calls. I wondered if our baby dream called IF might just die days before we even got to our second gathering.

But we finally made it through. I delivered my rough broken talk, still believing the lie that I had to hold this thing up and together, that I had to fight the dark cosmic forces coming at me.

Now here I stood in the back, hiding in the dark. Shelley Giglio came to stand beside me. She saw the fear. How could she not? It was all over me. She grabbed my trembling hand, and I said aloud the terrifying words that revealed my biggest insecurity, what I am so terribly afraid is true and everyone knows.

“I am not enough for this.

“I. Can. Not. Do. It.”

And then one of my most treasured mentors confirmed my greatest insecurity. With a peaceful smile, Shelley delivered the devastating truth: “I know. And that’s why God picked you, Jennie.”

My deepest, darkest fear was true?

And no scary truth has ever set me more free.

Of course, I hated that she confirmed it. Because what I thought I wanted was my self-esteem puffed up. I wanted her to tell me I was enough. I wanted to be the best and to know that’s why God picked me. I wanted to be especially gifted and smart and brave.

I want to be good enough to lead this thing. I want to be enough for God, for you. And that’s my sin. Deep down, I want to be enough. I don’t want to keep needing God.

I am realizing it’s not my curse that I believe I am not enough; it’s my sin that I keep trying to be.

All the while Jesus is saying, I want to free you from your striving, free you from your doubt, free you from your pride that cares more about your achieving something than you receiving something.

I am enough.

So you don’t have to be.