Let Limitations Do Their Work

There are certain limitations that we’ve learned to live with. We can’t fly, for example, but not many of us complain. But there are certain limitations that we experience that are harder to stomach.

Some of them come from within. My height and weight have kept any of my earlier dreams of professional sports from becoming a reality. I’d love to think that my size was my only limitation, but some greater levels of coordination always seem to escape me as well. I was known for hustling, not scoring. As an adult and as my calling and vocation as a pastor became clearer, I began to look for models of pastoring. I was drawn to examples of pastors with energy and vision—those who (at least from afar) seemed to have limitless capacity. But as I’ve lived out my vocation, I’ve recognize some limitations with both capacity and physiology. For one, I’m not very good at multi-tasking. I can do one thing pretty well and focus on that one thing. Some of my early models of ministry just seem to be able to do many things at an extremely high level all the time. Also, I've noticed I had a different level of capacity and energy entering my 30’s than I do now entering my 40’s. At some point, I realized I couldn’t do all the things I wanted to do and still be a good husband, father, and friend. On top of capacity levels, there are just some things I’m not very good at and need others to come along side me.

But some limitations are from without. I have four children, ages 8-15, in a 2 bedroom Manhattan apartment. The previous sentence assumes a multitude of limitations on my free time, imagination, energy, finances, and space—add to that certain losses, disappointments, and failures.

We live in a world that teaches us to repent of limitations and push past them. Age is just a number and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t reach your dreams. Christianity teaches us to actually embrace limitations, laboring within boundaries and resting when we’ve reached them.

If you’re paying attention, covetousness is a sign that you’re resisting limitations. You are unable to rejoice in the victories of others because you are too consumed with craving their victories for yourself. Covetousness is a kind of leprosy of the heart, that eats up any spiritual vitality. St. Gregory warns us that a coveting heart is like fire, it spreads and it’s end is someone who only desires what they do not have. A kind of self-created damnation. Similarly to covetousness, discontentment shows up when we refuse to receive our limitations. There’s a constant and anxious resentment always present that wears you down and never allows you to rest. I’ve experienced this and it’s destructive.

Thomas Merton describes this dynamic as seeking “relative omnipotence.”:

In our desire to be “as gods”—a lasting deformity impressed in our nature by original sin—we seek what one might call a “relative omnipotence”: the power to have everything we want, to enjoy everything we desire, to demand that all our wishes be satisfied and that our will should never be frustrated or opposed. .. This claim to omnipotence, our deepest secret and our inmost shame, is in fact the source of all our sorrows, all our unhappiness, all our dissatisfactions, all our mistakes and deceptions. It is a radical falsity.

But limitations can be deeply formational. A heart that can digest the truth, “Okay, I cannot have this,” becomes more fully aware of what they have. A heart that begins to grasp, “Okay, I cannot do this,” becomes more fully aware of what they can do. Marriage is the divinely given limitation of understanding who you have. I’ve learned that friendships are similar. I live in New York, a city of intense transience that has challenged my desire to form my friendships simply around common interests or comfort. In a city where people go more than stay, I’ve had to actually consider those whom the Lord has given me as friends, rather than the friend-group I would have designed. That has led me to see, actually, who I have. Rather than shaping a friend-group around my wants, I’ve had my wants shaped by my friendships are around me. That has been a sweet gift and I’ve experienced being loved more deeply because of it. And I will say this about friendships: being surrounded by friends who also live within their limitations is a great help in the struggle to do it ourselves.

My wife said to me one evening as we were talking about some limitations we were experiencing: “Let the limitations do their work.” Yes and maybe that ought to be a ordinary mantra. Limitations shape us into something deeper than what we would have planned for ourselves. There are, of course, times when limitations leads us to move on from our circumstances. The distance, for example, between you and a sick loved one limits you from caring for them and you may need to remove that limitation. But often times limitations are there because God wants you to experience a kind of fullness that you will never experience as long as you keep grasping beyond what you have. Spiritual maturity, then, doesn’t mean having the ability to move beyond limitations, but learning which ones to live within.

---

Here in NYC (like many other places in the US), we got blanketed by a snow storm. Here are a few pictures: