Quotes.
Love them. Always have, and I’m sure I always will.
There has always been for me a certain pull about quotes. It’s that understanding that someone else in the world identifies with exactly how you feel and has expressed it. It’s a connection of souls. Quotes have this trait about them that grabs at the inner works of my mind and heart. Whenever I read one that connects with me, I get a certain fuzzy joy inside. Quotes sometimes makes you feel like maybe you really aren’t so alone. Maybe you aren’t crazy. Another human being in this irrational messed up world understands what I’ve experienced and felt in the overwhelmingly crazy and mixed up planet. They give hope that maybe, just maybe, we’re really all in this together.
There is one quote that’s been sticking with me for a while. Ricky Gervais is the one who spoke it and to be honest, I’m not sure who that is without googling him, and I don’t want to take the time to find out either. What he said is what matters to me: “The best advice I’ve ever received is, ‘No one else knows what they’re doing either.’”
At the moment I read that, I looked up and glanced around. I’m not saying I had a world crashing moment in which everything clicked together, and I had the answer to my life. I was just sitting in a van full of people riding along Panama City beach next to my best friend and realized nobody knows perfectly what they are doing along this life journey.
My fellow church family, with whom I was riding, don’t really know what they are doing. My best friend or her fiancé (aka my non-blood brother) don’t know what they are doing. I don’t know what I’m doing.
And that’s okay.
It’s okay.
It really is.
For me, this quote speaks because I always find myself being intimidated by other people. The confidence I’ve acquired over the years has been built up over, but mostly a blessing from the Holy Spirit living in me after I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior. Because strong confidence has never been a natural mannerism for me, it tends to take a hit every once in a while when I think someone or anyone is grasping this life thing perfectly or better than me. When I feel like everyone one else has it together, I lose my confidence in thinking maybe I’m not doing as well as I should be.
Everyone else seems to know what path they are on, and they seem to be doing pretty well. They have friends. They are in steady relationships. They are doing work for the Lord. They are doing this and this and this. And inside I feel a little lost, scared or less than.
But those feelings aren’t exactly in line with the truth. Fear is established in lies. Truth says we sons and daughters of Christ are rooted and established in love. If that is the case, I don’t have to have everything together, not if I’m rooted in the One who does.
