After the girls are in bed, I escape daily routines by reading a few pages of a book, sneaking a square of “mama’s-reserve” chocolate, drinking a glass of wine on the back porch, or watching The Office (Oh, Michael Scott, Best Boss Ever).

It tastes sweet to step away from the ordinary, to create distance from our schedule, to relax from the activity.

But sometimes our hearts long for an escape from a burden heavier than life’s routines.

Achievers, those of us who lean more on self and less on the God of amazing grace, are often overwhelmed by all there is to do in our own homes and across the globe. We’re exhausted from working for our worth and trying hard to please. We need to shut up our inner critic and pause the ceaseless activity.

So we’ve become master escape artists.

Our  ways of escaping our life, without even realizing it, fall into one of two categories:  distracting or destructive. Some of us choose to binge watch Netflix, while others of us unscrupulously cut calories. Some volunteer for hours while some workout excessively. Some stay perpetually in motion while others pour one more glass.

Regardless of our methods, we’re still escaping, and we do typically do it for three reasons:

1. Our expectations for ourselves and others are too high.

I know, I know…you and I were raised to do our best and win, but sometimes excellence becomes the enemy and our expectations fall out of line with reality. As Holley Gerth writes in You’re Going to be Okay, expectations have the following traits:

  • They’re absolutes.
  • They include punishment.
  • They discourage us.
  • And they push us down and cause us to strive.

 

When our expectations are unattainable, they deflate us, make us feel condemned, and hold us back. So naturally, we want to escape them.

2. We believe that we’re failing in all the ways.

As Achievers, we’re wired to walk into a situation and see all the things that could be made better, shinier, and more efficient. We can easily spot all the things that need to be fixed…which translates as a strong ability to see all the ways we’re failing. As Kristin Neff writes in Self-Compassion, “We see ourselves as a problem to be fixed, so we don’t allow ourselves to experience self-kindness.”

When our failures feel heavy, we want to escape.

3. We don’t grant ourselves grace.

We believe that we haven’t gotten enough wins to warrant rest, to earn love, or to exhale. We refuse to see ourselves the way Christ sees us, that “we are more sinful than we believe and more loved than we will ever know.” (Timothy Keller)

Our graceless, points-based, always-measuring-but-never-quite-there life is why we want to escape.

But God meets us in our desire for escape by stepping into our reality.

Here’s the deal: Jesus doesn’t want us escaping our situation, our past, our hurts. Instead, Jesus wants us to face reality with Him.

Jesus meets us where we are in our most authentic selves and wants us to become more aware of our right-now lives. God is about reality: where we are, who we are, how we’re feeling. He is not at all interested in denying our circumstances and our right-now life for illusions of what we’d like life to be like or what the future should bring.

Jesus wants to meet the real us, the real you, just as you are. He doesn’t want a sanitized, churched-up version of us, all glossy and shiny. He also doesn’t want us distracted, destroying, and pushing away our pain. He simply wants to meet us where we are, in our right-now life.

Your right-now life.

Your struggles.

Your unmet needs.

Your ache that won’t go away despite the cutting or the overscheduled calendar or financial success.

Achiever-Friends, a change in routine is like a good exhale, but escaping your routine isn’t the way of Jesus. His way is about pouring out our heart to Him, not stuffing down our reality through our escape techniques. He wants each of us to face our hurt, pain, and fears head on because He loves us so and came to make us healthy and whole. And I’ll eat a piece of “mama’s reserve” chocolate to that.

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