Giving Up

Have you ever completely given up on someone or something? Have you ever wanted to?

I know I have often wanted to give up--on myself. Sometimes I think my life is too much and too hard for me, and I want to just cop out of everything and, I don't know, go curl up alone in a hole for the rest of my life? (I've never been completely clear what it is I would do.) But I never have. However, I don't take any credit for that fact. In those times when I have really truly wanted to give up, it has been something from within me that is *not* just me (the Holy Spirit?) that has popped up and said, "No, you are not going to sit there curled up in a ball crying forever. You are going to get up and keep trying." I've fought it, but it's there, and it won't let me give up.

I think that God has been incredibly patient with me. No matter how many times I get melodramatically pessimistic, no matter how many times I have entirely the wrong attitude, He sticks around. And when there's something He's trying to tell me? Does He tell me once or twice and then leave me alone? No. He keeps telling me until I finally listen. He keeps teaching me the same lesson over and over, and I'm the one who gets frustrated about the fact that it seems to take me about eighty thousand repetitions of the same lesson to actually learn it.

One thing I realized just this morning is that one of my fears is that God will one day say, "Oh, she'll never get it, why am I wasting My time?" and walk away. I'm afraid of this because I'm foolish enough to think that God might be like me. It's perfectly obvious to me that in His place, I would eventually give up and walk away.

Thank you, God, for not being like me. That is what makes You so worthy of all my praise and worship, all my life, all my heart, all my thoughts. I'm sorry that I fall so short so often of giving You all that I am.