the big picture

defeating self-sabotage by clearing our vision

Everything is blue and green outside and I'm looking at the pixelated world through the screened window. If I look too close at one square, my vision blurs and the whole picture is lost. But pulling back, ignoring the lines of the screen between us, I can see the trees and leaves and thousands of shades of sunlit green.

---

The night after Afton's graduation, Andrey came up to me and asked several questions: How old is Cham? What grade is she in? What grade am I in?

We'd been to two graduations and he'd heard the cheering and clapping, felt the emotions swell as the music played and the students marched around the mezzanine. And he was trying to figure out who would graduate next, and wondering if he would be able to ever catch up enough to do so.

As he stood there talking, he kept dismissively brushing silent tears aside, almost like he didn't even realize he was crying.

He told me how he'd been trying so hard to catch up, reading every night and doing his math. We talked about how "catching up" is not just checking things off and moving on to the next thing, but actually getting knowledge inside him, learning and understanding, and being willing to do the thinking necessary to grow to new levels.

He nodded and repeated that he'd been trying, and he was going to read even more so he could get there. He said he might need an extra year, but he wanted to graduate.

Skip ahead to the next day, school time. His language arts assignment tells him to use the word "unfettered" in a sentence, and he went round and round incorrectly, trying to use it as a verb – "He unfettered down the hill," and such.

Finally after about eleven tries, he used it correctly as an adjective. But here's the sentence:

I would like to be unfettered when I gradulate.

Nope, not a typo. He knows the word is "graduate." He knows how it's spoken, how it's spelled, what it means. And he knows that we know he knows this, particularly after weeks of discussion about graduations and attending the events where the word has been used by him and others, in speech and in writing, multiple times a day.

So was it a simple mistake? No. He insisted on writing it that way repeatedly, interrupting me and asking me to check it each time, even though he knew it was wrong. And finally, he came back one more time with it spelled as "gratulate."

"Okay, I'm done," I said. "You know what this word is, and you're not respecting my time. If you don't want to do school, you can do chores instead." I texted Vince downstairs to let him know Andrey was headed outside and needed a chore to do.

As I waited for Vin's reply, Andrey went back to the table, whipped his notebook over, and wrote something on it.

"Well, fine, I fixed it anyway." Yep, he spelled it perfectly in less than five seconds. And then I got to teach him the concept of too little, too late, because it was less about him doing it right (which we both knew he could do all along) and more about him abusing my attention and wasting time for both of us.

So why did he do it? Especially the day after he wept over how badly he wanted to catch up and graduate?

Because old habits die hard, and self-sabotage is one of the worst.

---

We self-sabotage out of fear: Fear of the future, fear of being disappointed, fear of things out of our control. We're afraid we'll be rejected or unnoticed, unnecessary, unappreciated, uncared for. We look too close at the barrier in front of us, our vision blurs, and we miss the big picture entirely.

Adoptive and foster parents often see this in their kids, but we also do this in our relationships, ministry, and business. If we see little to no reception of what we offer, we become afraid to offer at all. And it changes how we see things.

11pm in Alaska

I almost did this a few weeks ago. I opened our home up for a last-minute prayer meeting before a big event, and invited our small group to it. And then, not knowing if anyone was going to show up, I purposefully spent more time writing than cleaning, not wanting to frantically go over all the nooks and crannies I normally would, because I didn't want the effort to be wasted if no one came. I didn't want to feel like I'd gone to great lengths for nothing.

What really happened, though: Many in our group were celebrating graduations, some were recovering from illness, one family just had a baby, and a training was also happening that night. I wasn't rejected; it was just a crazy, busy month for all of us. And in the time I waited to see if anyone would show up – in the last few minutes I gave myself – I cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned.

The entire meeting ended up consisting of myself and my friend who just had a baby, praying over the phone. But it was a powerful time of intercession. And also, two of our kids came over that night at other times, and Vin's birthday was the next day, so the cleaning was still put to good use.

But if I was looking through a lens of rejection, I wouldn't have seen it that way.

---

Most of us don't deliberately self-sabotage in obvious ways. We are more likely to do it by avoiding heart and wholeness issues: Living in denial, pushing something aside, burying it deep. It's closely linked to deception, which, if you know anything about that, you know the person who's deceived almost never realizes they're deceived. Because that's the nature of deception.

But the Lord brings up these things He wants us to address. He is still patient and gracious; our avoidance will often drive us to such discomfort that we have to deal with it eventually, anyway. Maybe this is Him playing it cool, letting things take their course, knowing that we will come around. He is protecting and nudging, allowing and preventing, directing us like water toward a particular destination by moving the banks around us.