Poets & SaintsSample

Embrace Your Limitations

And thus we come to an important life principle: embrace your limitations.

I first heard this phrase from my friend Nick, a music manager. My sons are musicians. For the past two years, they’ve been plugging away in the general market as indie artists. Most of their energy and marketing has ridden the wave of social media. Nick, who has been a mentor to my sons, reminds them often to embrace their limitations.

We’re all limited in varying degrees. But that doesn’t have to squash our innate drive to uniquely create, to make a difference, to effect change.

If somewhere in your story someone told you that you weren’t creative, please know that is simply not true. Researcher Brené Brown writes, “‘I’m not very creative’ doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.”

God created man and woman, creatures made in His likeness and yet limited in capacity. Men and women are equal in value but vary in physiology and proclivity. They share a common humanity and yet carry distinction.

It isn’t accidental that God formed one from the dust and one from a rib.

Embrace the limitations of being a woman. Or being a man.

Embrace the limitations of being a mother. Or not being one.

If you’re in a season of productivity, produce and be grateful for the opportunity to see the fruit of your labor.

If you’re in a season of slowing, choose to enjoy the subtleties of beauty. Sketch a leaf, smell the honeysuckle, carve a pumpkin or ten of them. Lie in the grass and feel the earth. Sit in a snowdrift and absorb the silence.

Recognize that each limitation points toward something of value in your life. And remember, a limitation today may not be one tomorrow.

The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life … need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. -Henri Nouwen