Discouraged

"...And the list gets longer

Who I wish I was and was no longer

...

But the gap grows wider

Between who I am and all I aspire to be..."

--Nichole Nordeman, "Take Me As I Am"

I am gaining a clearer and clearer vision for the kind of life I want to live. With each step forward in understanding, I am gaining a more and more painful awareness of the chasm that lies between where I am and where I want to be. It's frustrating, discouraging. But God meets me in places like this post from Mark Lauterbach at GospelDrivenLife:

"I am tempted to discouragement -- I look at myself and think: 'This is as good as I can be after 35 years in Christ??!!' But then I ask the help of others and discover that they are the same! And then I am reminded by one of those others that my hope is not that I shall be well in this life -- but that Christ was well for me -- and that to be discouraged with myself is to have believed in myself -- and that is the opposite of the Gospel."

Read the whole thing here.