Words of Hope: Fulfillment
Our family line had a burning desire to be remarkable. I know my dad wrestled with this internal drive. He continuously worked to move his sense of self-worth away from achievement and into being. He shifted to an intrinsic value for a life, focusing on meaning and purpose without having to be “the best.”
In Dad’s journal, he had a card that said: “Misbelief, if I am to be a worthwhile person, I must be truly outstanding in at least one major respect.” Then he had handwritten the word, “Stop.”
To me it is his reminder to lay aside ambition and the drive to do and be remarkable and instead lay aside ambition for gratitude. A human being rather than a human doing.
Jesus dismantles this idea of wealth, achievement and power by telling His disciplines to welcome children and to become like a child. A small child longs for unity, friendship, and connection rather than tyranny, classism, and ranking.
I consider what Dad was truly wanting because he wasn’t attracted to being above other people. What Dad deeply wanted was loving connection. He loved unity, he loved the underdog, he loved a table of equality. He hated injustice.
What he wanted was to remove the deep feeling of being unloved and unwanted he experienced from his childhood of poverty and overt classism. He had the right impulse but the wrong tool to solve the problem. The urge to be loved was correct, the tool to feel love through doing something remarkable was the problem.
Dad eventually learned doing remarkable things cannot fill the void. It only makes the need greater. This is the despair arising from solving real spiritual needs with earthy substitutions. No wealth, fame, remarkable achievement can fill the longing in our souls.
I look to Dad for this reminder. What is causing me to feel unfulfilled? What is driving me to misbeliefs about my worth? What do I need to stop?
I thank Dad for his honesty and transparency to wrestle with these profound existential questions and come to the truth that earthy accolades and successes cannot fulfill the eternal heart.
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” Psalm 23:1
