voices of shame: when anxiety over insignificance motivates me

I’m not sure I’m going to try super hard to learn Kinyarwanda.

Before you judge me, hear me out.

Life in Rwanda is giving me an indescribable gift. It kind of feels like a “continued education” class that’s required of teachers every few years. The name of my course is “voices of shame: when anxiety over insignificance or fear of being unlovable motivates me.”

This is a rut I fall into what feels like regularly: wondering if my life will matter; wondering if it will matter in the ways I want it to; wondering if it will matter to the people whose opinion I care about. And God keeps meeting me here, gently but firmly speaking into lies I believe about what it means to know and serve Him.

Many days there is a struggle within me about what “god” I’ll serve. Oftentimes my “god” is my significance/my name/my reputation/my likability and I spend my days bowing down before that god, spinning in circles trying to make sure I’m doing enough to be significant in the world, doing enough to be impressive, doing enough to make sure I’m lovable to God and people. It isn’t a kind god to serve, my friends. It is brutal, harsh, exhausting. But I’ve spent many days at that grueling altar.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have an impact in the world. I truly believe that’s part of how we were designed. And certainly sacrifice and laying down one’s life are a part of that.

But I have begun to learn the dangerous/slight nuance in my life, when behaviors (motivated by fear-of-insignificance or being unlovable) are sneakily disguised and appear like callings, like following Him. Lots of people assume those behaviors are beautiful and “Christian,” but I’m continuing to see that some of what I do or am tempted to do is (at least partly) motivated by shame and fear, not love. 

I came to Rwanda with only a few things I felt sure of:  I was going to wait 3-6 months to commit to very many things to see how our family’s adjustment is going, and I was going to study (hard!) Kinyarwanda (the local language).

But the past few months I have felt God showing me different things about who I am. About what at least the next little season might have for me. And the things He is showing me there (along with serving and loving my family well) feel like they will take up most/all of the time I have in a day/week. I don’t like always like admitting my limitations that way, but that kind of acknowledgment keeps resonating as deeply truer, freer and feels reflective of a submission to my created-not-Creator position in life.

This isn't a statement about anyone but me. The Holy Spirit really does actively and accurately work in each of our lives. I believe a lot of expats here are meant to learn Kinyarwanda. They were made for it. They are meant to be able to have true, deep friendship, fellowship, teaching and learning capability with folks here, which necessitates learning the local language. Yes many people know English, but knowing someone’s first/heart language is so crucial to real friendship. Thus many really are meant to study/master the language.

But every time I think about learning Kinyarwanda this is what goes through my head:

• I need to start studying the language so I don’t feel like a failure (or so I feel like a “somebody”) when visitors come from the States.
• I need to start studying the language so people here will think I’m committed.
• I need to learn the language because ____ did and I care about what they think of me. or because ______ did and I want to be more like them.
• You suck you suck you suck, Adrianne. Why can’t you just do more? Why can’t you get your act together enough? Plenty of other people seem capable of doing it.

I don’t think those are the reasons most people have learned Kinyarwanda. I think there’s a beautiful, pure, given desire within them that God birthed. But the only voice I hear when I consider it is one of shame and fear.

Last night as Hunter and I talked over dinner (and tears), I realized more and more I felt an emotional and real “would God still love me” if I didn’t _______; would my life be enough if I didn’t ___________. Last night the fill in the blank was “would I be enough if I didn’t learn Kinyarwanda”, but before this specific battle, I have struggled throughout life believing that the harder things are always better. That doing them makes me lovable to God and to others. And so I feel anxious and comply and submit my life to my fears over and over again. Show me the harder, less traveled road, Mr. Frost, and yes, please I’ll take it. But I’ve found on that road I’ve stumbled and been wounded time and time again. I’ve become slave to an impossible-to-satisfy god, even while making offering after insufficient offering.

So for now, I’m going to wait on learning Kinyarwanda.

That could change. At some point (maybe even soon) God might open windows of time for me and make it clear that it is an option/invitation/calling and He might plant in me a true desire for it. But His voice and invitation would sound so different than the voices I'm hearing right now. Voices that enslave, shame, cause me to lose sleep.

Instead, today I’m choosing to submit my life to freedom in Christ. That’s not a permissiveness or laziness as I once feared it might be. But it is a freedom in the rest He bought for me. It is freedom in the truth that I don’t have to do something to make Him love me or to be enough for Him. It is freedom to embrace limitations and constraints shared by humanity. And it is a freedom to embrace how he made me (and to the truth that He delights in that intentional design). And a freedom to rest in His finished work.

For any of you who also are motivated by fear of insignificance or something similar, I hope you too get to start learning what freedom in Christ feels like. It gives way to rest and to joy, and to really learning the limited (but beautiful!) things for which you’re made. And this morning as I worshiped the One true God who gave His life for us, freedom in Him gave way to grateful tears.