Striving
- kendramanuel01
- Jul 20, 2020
- 4 min read
I didn’t realise I struggled with this until recently, it's actually crazy how much we don’t know what’s going on in our own hearts. There's so much that’s hidden, avoided and ignored.
When we become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, attitude or behaviour we don’t really see the damage it does within ourselves and often times it's only when we see it affecting the people around us that we notice it.
In my case, it was through the way I was seeing the hurt and confusion in the people in my life that I realised the effects of my own behaviour.
This sounds super dramatic, but in essence, people are important to me so when I see my own heart affecting those that I care about, something needs to change.
Strive.
We strive for a better life, for a successful life for an aesthetic kinda life. From the moment were born we have people already deciding what our life is supposed to look like, she’s going to become a doctor or she’s going to be super smart, she’s going to do this and do that and be this and we become accustomed to living like that, living to reach the standards that others imposed on us. We feel it at an early age, reaching a certain percentage in school, making first team in soccer, having the most amount of friends. Without realizing we begin living our lives for an audience. We begin to crave approval, the golden star. I've never been much of a student, I got average grades, I was never the first team, I was kinda just mediocre at everything and honestly, I was fine with it, I mean I felt the pressure to do more and be better but it wasn't until I got to matric that I began to strive for more in terms of academics. They say that traumatic experiences give you this fight or flight mode and I think that's what happened to me. I mean saying traumatic sounds very dramatic but as I said - friendships are very important to me, so when one of my friendships ended I immediately had to choose between fight or flight. I had no control over the situation so I took the one thing I could control and began to strive, it was during exam season and instead of dealing with the emotions that come along with heartbreak I dove deeper into my schoolwork, I studied like I've never studied before. At the beginning of matric I was failing bio, like 30% and by the end of exam season, I was getting 80%. A subject that I once never understood I now was performing exceptionally well at. I got an academic award and that fueled me to strive even harder and when I didn't reach the goals I wanted, I beat myself down. Now you might be wondering, Kendra going from a fail to an academic award is good and yes it is, but the manner in which I was doing it was unhealthy, I was trying to prove myself I was trying to prove to others that I was enough, I didn't feel enough for someone so I wanted to be enough in terms of schoolwork, and for you, this could be expressed in different ways - striving to lose or gain weight, striving to be desired or striving to live a wealthy life. Regardless of what it is, we're striving. I think this way of thinking got filtered down into other areas of my life, church life, family life and relationship life. I found myself always having to prove myself, making no mistakes, being the perfect example.
Striving: make great efforts to achieve or obtain something.
Striving is done alone, in your own strength, it's designing your own path. Striving is lonely, it's tiresome and you're left feeling burnt out. I found myself burnt out, especially in this weird lockdown season that we're in, I found myself saying yes to everything and everyone and striving to do everything.
What you abide in is what you're becoming like, so if you abide in the approval of others you'll constantly find yourself performing for them if you abide in worldly success, you'll constantly find yourself never feeling fully satisfied, If you abide in the idea of this perfect fairytale relationship, you'll never be happy with the one you've got.
The fruit of your life is determined by what you abide in.
And because I was abiding in this idea of being good enough or perfect the fruit of my life was feeling unsatisfied. I found myself striving to reach this unattainable level.
Mark Ramsey says, don't try harder, draw closer.
Stop trying to do more, be more and reach more by yourself, drawing closer to him ensures that you are enough!
How liberating is it to pursue wholeness instead of perfection! - MHN
Here's an illustration for my visual people :
Striving is like walking a path by yourself, doing all that you can alone, using all of your own strength.
Abiding is walking next to God on this pathway, it's leaning on his strength, it's pursuing him, its pursuing wholeness instead of perfection!
John 15:4
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
This is a journey, and I'm so thankful that this layer of my heart has been brought to light! Come on, thankful for a God that loves me as I am, but too much to leave me that way.
Take a moment and reflect on whether you're striving or abiding. Your fruit will tell you the difference.
Here's the song that's been my anthem on this subject:
And here's the preach:
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