"You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill - more of each
than you have...."
from "How to be a Poet," by Wendell BerryI was scrambling this past weekend as I mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared to spend two nights helping to lead 20+ girls on a church youth retreat. Even before I left my house, I was scraping my sanity off the floor, wondering—how do you show up generously when you’re already exhausted and emotionally spent? How do you manage your own overwhelm when it feels humiliating to admit it? I found Wendell Berry’s line ringing in my ears already—“You must depend upon… more of each than you have,” and found comfort in the hospitable candor of acknowledging dependence and emptiness. Those words continue to rise to the surface of my mind, offering me a way to admit need, and to pray.
I need more affection, more love than I have, more knowledge, more skill, more wisdom. On a multitude of fronts, I am grasping my ineptitude, my shallow capacity for the challenge of really loving. How proficient I am in the guise of self-sacrifice, appearing well-meaning yet remaining unscathed! How easily I evade the work of open-heartedness by reasoning the pain of slim sacrifices away with the transactional presumption of repayment. When I come face to face with Christ, I find these half-assed attempts at love to be cheap, fragile, false.
The love that is really love— the thing that digs deep and offers open-handedly, joyfully, unreservedly— that isn’t afraid of the cost, isn’t holding out for self-satisfaction or accolades, isn’t looking for acknowledgment—that is the love that I want both to receive, and to embody. It is more than I have. I’m so aware that the love I have for anyone, both those closest to me and those who remain strangers— even the most costly forms are still incomplete. The truest affections I can muster are still fragmented bits of that wild, unreserved, unfancy, gritty, generous, unselfconscious thing that offers such safety to those who find themselves undone in its embrace.
When I dig into the soil of my soul, I come up with the good dirt of real care but it’s heavily mixed with clay, rocks, and my own finitude. I’m consumed with my own needs, wants desires, and limits, and truthfully, giving beyond them isn’t always right. How do I steward the life and the limits I have, imbuing each bit with something selfless and genuine? How do I grow an awareness, a wisdom, a receptivity to the life, community, location, and time that I find myself within? How do I deepen in my ability to love, when it is by definition a costly endeavor, and the needs are endless? I need more than I have.
Into the depletion of last weekend, the image came to mind of Christ asking the disciples how many loaves they had as they stood before the thousands: just seven—a laughable amount.1 So very few in the face of so much need. They needed more love, more loaves than they had. Yet Christ multiplied their deficient capacity with more than enough. I sensed him saying the same thing to me on Friday morning before I left for the girls retreat—“you only have seven loaves of energy right now? Seven loaves of love? Seven loaves of wisdom? That’s fine. Give them to me.” I can honestly say that through my exhaustion, I felt him grow my love, my capacity, my joy in ways that surprised me to the point of tears. I saw him show up and care for those growing girls in ways I simply could not. Within my limits I felt him give me the delight of showing up as myself for people who needed the finite presence I had to offer. It was a weekend where he gave me more affection, more knowledge, more skill than I had, and I received more than I expected.
As I reflect on this vignette (and others!), I find myself more aware of the necessity of prayer—to ask for more than I have. My limits are shallow without the expansive refreshment and sustenance of the divine. Though I can muscle through a lot, I know the grin-and-bear-it version of myself is the one with the quickest expiration and the most cynical rebound. I need more than I have in order to be the full-bodied, full-souled version of myself—the one that is deeply empathetic yet sets wise boundaries, who is quick to laugh and to cry, to repent and to forgive, who is learning to love for the sake of simply loving. And all I can do is offer what little I have and trust that somehow he will make it more.
Mark 8:5