The Dithering of a District Diva

Today, July 31st, is my twenty-fifth birthday.   Cue the obligatory quarter-life crisis:

What have I done with my life? Where am I going? Why am I going there? Am I on the right track? Did I make the right choices? HOW DID I GET HERE????

Now that I think about it, it appears I have a quarter-life crisis every three-to-six months. In law school, when I was feeling directionless and confused — as law school tends to make one feel — I would buy a suit. A Calvin Klein, a Tahari, a Liz Claiborne, an Anne Klein…a very nice suit.

I now have over 100 suits hanging in my closet.  This does not include the ones that are in bags waiting to be cleaned or the ones I left in suitcases in my parents’ basement.

Clearly it took me some time, but I eventually learned that quarter-life crises are financially taxing, and a tad ineffective, since I never really could buy my way out of them.

So, when I moved to D.C., I started something new: rearranging my furniture.  I’ve been here for nearly a year and half now rearranged my apartment for the third time. It is definitely less-expensive than buying my way to contentment. But, while it is a great work out, any joy I receive from it is fleeting.

The deeper question is where do these crises come from? Why do I allow them?

Before, I wasn’t sure I was on the right track. I had planned to do well in law school, get a big firm job, make big firm money, and be the youngest person in my graduating class.  I did all of those things and I was very displeased with life, I hated working in a law firm, and the idea of going to court made me yawn.

But now, I am certain that I am doing what God made me to do! Though I can’t see my future clearly, I know that where I am at this moment is propelling me towards the endless possibilities God has placed at my fingertips. I am, at last, on the right track.  But so many people that I would like to understand that, don’t understand that I am finally doing what I was made to do. I have given these people such importance over my life that their disapproval, or lack of awe is particularly distressing to me. I am, after all, a Leo — in every sense of the zodiac — and I adore attention, commendation, and praise. I live for it.

I’ve shared this before, but it is so appropriate on today of all days that I not only listen and indulge in this wisdom, but also pass it along again.  The truth from Pastor J.R. Vassar:

It’s called the fear of man, when you have a deep concern about what others think of you. When there’s this controlling desire for human approval and a controlling fear of people’s rejection, where you desire to be respected you desire to be esteemed you desire to be admired you desire to be included you desire to be invited in; and you have an accompanying fear of being overlooked of being mistreated of being neglected of being excluded of being victimized.

It’s the fear of man. We want so badly people’s acceptance and we fear so badly people’s rejection.

Now these are legitimate desires….In fact, these legitimate desires keep you from sinful and destructive behavior. There are things you haven’t done in life out of fear of how you would look in front of people and its a good thing you didn’t do those things. But the problem is when these natural and legitimate desires become inordinate, or excessive, or controlling…when we become consumed by what people think about us…When we start to need the approval of someone, or anyone, or even people we don’t even know. It is the fear of man. And what happens is we start to define ourselves by how people respond to us, or by how we perceive their perceptions of us, and we get really enslaved to the fear of man.

But how do you know if you have the Fear of Man?

Do you need something from others so that you become dependent upon them? Do you expect a lot from people? Do you crave compliments?  Are you ever afraid that you might be exposed as an impostor?  Are you overly concerned with how you look or how much you weigh?  Do you ever feel unappreciated? Do you need people to notice and applaud, affirm, or cheer you on? Do you ever make excuses, shift blame, and wriggle your way out of responsibility? Are you over committed? Do you get easily embarrassed?  Do you compare yourself to others and feel good when you win, or feel envy when you lose? If you do any of this you are defining yourself by another. This is the fear of man, and it is bondage. We just end up enslaved to other people’s opinions of us or enslaved to fear of what they might do to us or keep from us. Our idols own us, they control us, they dictate the direction of our lives. It will tell you what to think, what to feel, what to be.

What is it about human nature that makes the fear of man so difficult? We are glory-hungry people. We want praise and commendation…But here’s the thing: You were made for it.

You were made for weight, for significance, for approval, for acclaim! When God made Adam and Eve, He crowned them with glory and honor and His proclamation over them was “very good,” and they had glory. The very affirmation of God. We are made for this! But we lost it. Sin entered the picture and robbed and stripped Adam and Eve of glory.  They tried to get it back by sewing fig leaves together to cover their nakedness and get back their glory.  That’s what we are trying to do, we have lost our glory through sin and we are trying to get it back any way we can. These fig leaves we sow together to try to compensate, bolster up our sagging sense of self, and gain back glory. We go for accomplishments, beauty, wealth, power, fame, reputation, family. These are fig leaves. They wither.

We will use people to make us feel right, to justify our existence, we are trusting in other people to heal us, to validate us, to justify us, and restore our glory and save us.But here’s the problem: We are asking or expecting of people what they cannot do for us, and we crush them under our expectations. People can never give us the approval we desire, and we crush them under the weight of that expectation. If you look to broken people to heal your brokenness, for the restoration of your glory, you’re asking glory-deficient, broken people to give you the very thing they lack! It is futility to seek this glory from men. It crushes them and it leaves  us empty. It’s a dead-end street.

So how do we get liberated from this fear of man?

There is a glory and an honor and approval and acceptance, a commendation that is greater than what we find from glory-deficient, broken people: The glory that comes from God.  He is ready to give the glory that we are hungry for.  God restores to us the glory that was lost to us in the fall. He provides for us approval and acceptance through Christ. The only commendable took our sins upon Himself and became condemned so that we, the condemned ones could become commendable.

It’s called imputation. Our record is imputed to Christ and He is condemned, His record is imputed to us and we are commended, so He can hand a verdict down to us to say that you are ok, I accept you, I commend you, I restore your glory. This is ours through faith, and its only ours in Christ. Therefore, God would say about us what He said about Christ: “This is my son, this is my daughter, in whom I am well-pleased.”

This could be ours. The God of this universe could look upon us and delight in us, that we could actually be an ingredient in the Divine happiness. That you might actually know the favor and acceptance and the commendation of God. When that settles into you, all the other definitions we’ve been given or we’ve used to define ourselves fall away. It displaces all of those other desires for man’s acceptance.

But, you have to be delivered from your obsession to be loved and honored and be consumed with a greater desire for God to be loved and honored…and when you get liberated from your incessant need to be loved and honored, you can actually live with this new consuming desire to see God loved, to see God honored. So the ruling desire of your heart is to see the Father loved and exalted, like Jesus lived to see the Father loved and exalted.

That is the key to your joy and your freedom.

The quarter-life (pre-quarter-life, mid-life) crisis is nothing more than the fear of man. I know that.  But, simply knowing that broken people cannot make me whole is completely different from actually applying this knowledge to my daily life.   God gave me a talent to write for His glory, not for my own.  God gave me life to live for His glory, and not my own, so that everything I do should be for the exaltation of Christ, for the drawing nearer of others to Christ. There is nothing else.

If I fear people and what they can do to me, and what their lack of approval would mean, I can’t love anyone. I can’t tell them the truth God has lead me to say, I can’t use my gift the way He intended. I will be shackled, unfulfilled, and forever in crisis mode.

That is no way to live.

I had so many goals that I wanted to achieve by 25. Some I have met, and some I have not.  Some had holy intent, and most were for my own glory. But this year, my only goal is to be an ingredient in the Divine happiness. To please God. To have Him look upon me and say “this is good.”

So, here’s to 25 more years and to living a life that is free from the fear of man.

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