I Am Just A Person, With Limitations
I am just a person
With limitations
Help me to know that that’s okay
Do you ever have that thing where you notice a theme in your life? Like, you keep hearing yourself say the same type of thing over and over again, and you realize: hey, there’s a pattern here.
I am making preparations for my upcoming Albums Release Show — a concert celebrating the release of my latest album, Earthly (available 9/1/23), where myself and a full band will be playing songs from all of my releases — so I’ve been reviewing lyrics from songs that I wrote 5+ years ago. And I see a pattern.
Let me show you:
“I’m not a savior, I’m just a girl.” —Free Me Up, 2020
“Somedays I wake up exhausted… I spend time in prayer and don’t feel renewed…” —Remain in Your Love, 2020
“You didn’t put me on this earth to fix it. You didn’t bring me here to be the Savior.” —Fascinated By You, 2021
“Maybe I’m just not that tough. Maybe I’m not strong enough for what’s ahead.” —Breathe In, 2021
“Sometimes the freedom to make your own choice feels like a trick or a trap… Oh, why does it take so much courage to be who You made me to be?” —Stone Tablets, 2021
“I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders; everything I’ve ever done wrong.” —Not Too Long, 2022
“Can I just be weak for a little while? What if I’m scared from time to time? You know I won’t always be right, and I need to know that that’s okay sometimes.” —Can I Just Be Weak, 2023
Photo by Liz Brown
High demand religion. A religious expression that is not human-sized and never can be. Pressure to perform, pressure to be strong, pressure to be more than what I am, more than who God made me to be. Pressure to never make a mistake, to never have any doubts, to be everything to everyone at every point in time.
I am not criticizing religion here. I am criticizing the perversion of it, or at least the perversion of the gospel. And what I’ve found is that the pressure I just described is actually peer pressure (at least in my case). It is social pressure, fueled by a deep desire to belong. In my experience, it was informed by non-verbal cues as much as anything anyone explicitly expressed. I would see what happened to people who didn’t perform well in a highly demanding religious setting: how they were talked about behind their backs, the coded language used to describe them. I would see them get disinvited to things or even shunned if they failed to perform. All of that amounts to a lot of pressure to perform and to perform well.
But Jesus is not the one applying that pressure.
Photo by Liz Brown
I love how Eugene Peterson paraphrased Matthew 11:28-30: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
I want to follow Jesus. I am interested in following in His footsteps. I am interested in walking like Him, treating people like He treated people, caring about the things He cared about. For me, high demand religion did not help me in that endeavor; it did not lead me to actually follow Jesus.
Photo by Liz Brown
So, I guess that is what Serenity is about. And my language might be clunky and I may be lacking in theological precision. But I am trying — trying to figure these things out, and trying to learn what it looks like to follow Jesus and still be a human-sized person. Also, I am healing — healing from all the pressure that I described before, and from the pain of no longer belonging once I stopped performing. Even if I am no longer in an environment of intense peer pressure, I still feel it in my bones, and I’m still afraid of that judgment. I still feel like it is unacceptable for me to be human-sized. This is why I resonate with the Serenity prayer:
“God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make things right
If I surrender to His Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with Him
Forever and ever in the next.”
These sentiments of being both human-sized and also determined to follow Jesus will come up more and more as I talk about my new album, Earthly. (Because that’s pretty much what the whole album is about.) On that note, please pre-save Earthly now! Also, please join me for the Albums Release Show on September 2nd in Des Moines — you can buy tickets here! And if you haven’t yet, listen to Serenity. Do so on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, or wherever you stream music.
Photo by Liz Brown