Some months back I wrote a blog post called We Get To. I was inspired by a couple of women leaders in my life, one in my work life and one in my church life that drove home the point (that not incidentally my wife has been trying to drive home in my home life for almost 25 years) that we “Get To” be who we are created to be. We don’t have to, we GET TO.
Today, I feel compelled to write about what we DON’T GET TO do. We don’t get to be more than we were created to be. This is self-evident whether you are the most faithful doctrinaire Christian or the most dedicated, ardently objective, naturalist in the world. or someone like me who falls somewhere in the messy middle We are built, whether by a designer or not, to be limited to exactly what we are created to be. The cool thing is, if we realize our potential, we GET TO be ALL of THAT. Many times, maybe most of the time, we are not fully realizing all that we get to be because we get in our own way, but we only get to be what we are, not something else.
For instance, we don’t get to be bigger than what we are. We don’t get to be God. We don’t get to be the universe. We don’t get to be the conscience of every person in the world, dictating right from wrong. We don’t get to single-handedly save the world or even all of our friends. We don’t get to rescue a business, or a project or a town, or a country or a church by ourselves. As much as we would like to- we don’t get to.
We forget that we don’t get to do that sometimes. Sometimes we feel like the very weight of the world is on our shoulders, but we don’t get to have the weight of the world on our shoulders. We are not built for that in any way shape or form. We are not built for that in any faith tradition nor are we built from that from a strictly secular sense.
The hard truth is, we don’t get to be alone in the world. There will always be other people until there are no longer people. We don’t get all the power the world has to give, because it can’t possibly be held by one person. We don’t get to have all the money in the world, nor all the love, nor all the fame. We simply don’t get to have it all. We simply don’t get to be all things to all people.
You may not agree with me, but I made a leap of faith that says that there is a God that does Get To. He is the ultimate Get To. Whether you agree with me or not, you can’t argue that anyone else Gets To be more than we are as humans. We get to be salt and light, but we don’t get to be The Light of the World-there is only one of those.
Which leads me to the beauty in the fact that we don’t get to. The beauty of that is that we all need each other. In fact, the world needs us to need each other precisely because none of us gets to have all the answers. So even when it seems like there are people or countries or players that Get To have it all, just remember that they don’t get to be anything more than what they were created to be just like you and I don’t get to.
Remember that the power is not in one human or a small group of humans getting it all their way, the power is when we all come together and when we all recognize our proper place in a posture of curiosity, humility, intentionality, and teachability. We all get to thrive when we do that and assume that posture together. All the other ways of being in the world are deceptions and lies and people fooling themselves into believing they get to do things they were never created to do.
We get to be who we are created to be, nothing more, nothing less. That is a beautiful thing. Thank You, God for that.
“In fact, the world needs us to need each other precisely because none of us gets to have all the answers.” I absolutely love this statement!
Thanks Devaun !