Feeling Inadequate
When God approaches Moshe with a divine mission to redeem the people, Moshe balks. He is full of self doubt and insecurity and a sense of inadequacy. I’m a bad speaker. I’m awkward and bumbling. I stutter. Who am I to take on such a role? I’m a runaway, a refugee, a victim. I don’t have it in me to represent God. Why is God even speaking to me? I am like that sneh, that bush that is all lit up right now, lowly and unimportant and full of thorns and flaws. Surely someone else can do it better than me (Exodus 3).
Maybe feeling into any of that in you, the times that you feel like Moshe, inadequate, incapable, insecure, the times that those feelings take over and you want to turn away and hide, shrink, disappear, collapse like that small thorn bush on the ground.
The Divine Response of Self Modeling
God responds to Moshe in various ways, but I want to focus on something that is not usually understood as a response – the way that God portrays God’s relationship to God’s own self, Moshe asks for God’s name and God responds – Eheyeh asher Eheyeh, I am who I am (Exodus 3:14). This is not a direct response to Moshe’s insecurities, but in sharing this name at this moment, God offers Moshe a different model of how to orient towards oneself, and this self modeling is perhaps the most powerful response of all.
[A grammatical side note: Eheyeh asher Eheyeh has both a present and a future sense to it, both “I am what I am” and “I will be what I will be.“ In biblical Hebrew, what we consider the future tense is really an imperfect tense and is more about aspect than time, reflecting a sense of ongoing habitual intention – I am who I am, and that will always be true; that is my continuous commitment for all time.]
Solid in Myself
I am who I am. What does that mean? To start, perhaps imagining that you are in a conversation with someone and you are complaining about the way they are, wanting them to be different. And maybe they listen with care and they are willing in certain ways to change how they interact with you, but at some point they say – listen, I am who I am. That’s just me. There’s only so much I can bend. I have to be true to me. And I am not going to apologize for that.
So you might feel hurt or frustrated or you might wish it were otherwise, but I wonder if you can also sense something else – a kind of admiration for that stance, almost a relief at their solidness, at their refusal to abandon themselves, at the boundary they have placed around their own integrity. You can push at them as much as you want, but they will still stand solid in themselves, unapologetic. They won’t collapse under your pressure. Maybe feeling it as a frustrated child with fists trying to punch against a parent, angry and wishing things were otherwise, and the parent just contains the aggression, standing strong, solid enough in themselves not to topple over. That’s what we need sometimes, someone to model that solidness of self, to not fall over even under our pressure. Sensing how such a stance relaxes you, giving you a sense of security and ultimately giving you permission to be that solid in yourself.
That’s what God is offering Moshe here, a model of the solidness of radical self acceptance and self honoring. I am who I am. And I will continue to be who I am. The world I created is not perfect and you may have complaints, but I am who I am. And I won’t apologize for that. More than perfection, what is divine in this life is something surprising and radical – it is the act of staying with yourself and honoring yourself exactly as you are.
Not About Perfection
I am who I am. That is my way of being, says God, and I offer it to you as a model for how to be with yourself. You sit there, absorbed in your negative self evaluation. Not good enough. Too awkward and tongue tied. You never have the right words. Lowly. Unworthy. You loop around and around your flaws, some of them real, most of them, maybe all of them, exaggerated and, through another light, might well be considered strengths. So you’re wrong about the flaws, but that’s beside the point. You are allowed to have flaws, to be imperfect (interesting that the tense used here is called “imperfect”). Perfection is not divine. Perfection is empty, sanitized, sterile, without passion or relationship or dynamism. Sometimes I wonder if perfection is the work of Satan or the Evil Inclination, a mirage to lead people astray. Perfection is not what I want for you, God says. What I want for you is to accept yourself, to honor yourself, to stay with yourself always, to claim yourself in all your messiness, to be on your own team, to honor the truth of who you are.
Saying That To Ourselves
I am who I am. What if you said that right now to yourself, my friends? I am who I am. We think we need to bend, to accomodate, to apologize, to fix ourselves, to fit ourselves into a mold, to meet expectations and standards, to do it all right. We are basically running around saying – I’m sorry I’m me. Meanwhile God, so sad, looks down upon us and says – what? you’re sorry you’re you? I made you that way!
Maybe noticing in yourself all that apologizing and striving and self abuse, how so often we are the ones in that imagined conversation complaining about our own selves. What if for a moment we took the posture of the other, of God, in that conversation? Listen up, we might say to that critical voice, I am who I am, warts and all, stutters and all. Stop badgering me. I claim me. Ok, and if you, the critical voice, are also a part of me, I’ll claim you, too. But you’re not in charge. What’s in charge is this divine capacity in me for self acceptance, self honoring, self devotion, self claiming. I am who I am and that’s enough. God is expressing here a profound self sufficiency. Getting a sense of the solidness and completeness of that claiming of self. You are like a tree deeply rooted in the ground, the ground of your own divine self. Staying with yourself that solidly, like a mountain, unmovable in your loyalty to yourself. Unmovable in your loyalty to yourself.
A Parable
Here is the mashal, the parable, that comes to me: It is like two people who walk through a crowded street, Sarah and Leah. Sarah believes that she is dressed in rags. We can’t see clearly whether she is in fact wearing rags. She may actually be wearing exquisite finery, but it makes no difference. Sarah believes she is clothed in rags and feels deeply ashamed of this, hiding behind people, trying to shrink and disappear into the crowd, ducking into corners and alleyways, obsessing over how shabby people must think she is. Meanwhile, on the street, no one notices her, or if they do, they feel a darkness come over them and they shudder and turn away.
The second person, Leah, we can see more clearly. She is definitely not dressed in finery, but in some mix of ordinary clothing and rags. She is aware of her rags, but she doesn’t mind. She sees them as kind of beautiful in their own way and also knows of her own overall intrinsic shining beauty despite the rags. Leah walks tall, with confidence and pride, beaming and smiling and holding her head up high, regal as an eagle as she walks through the middle of the crowd, radiating light like the fire in Moshe’s thorn bush. The crowd parts as she walks through it (like the Red Sea), people turning to admire her, feeling brightened by her presence, each one standing a little taller in themselves. And slowly, as she passes through them, people start fishing into their pockets and taking out the rags they have been hiding there for a long time, taking them out and waving them about in the light of day, so that the street now becomes a giant parade of raggedy flags flying high with joy and pride and laughter. It’s ok to be yourself, the rags sing out. I am who I am. Serve God with your rags and your thorns and your stutters. The parade is a praise song to the one who created us as we are, a praise song to the light of our messy imperfection. Sing out and be yourself. We may be thorn bushes, but we are lit up now. Feel the light of your own confidence and pride and joy and let it radiate through you and flow out. I am who I am and I celebrate that.
A Fierce Energy
Sometimes in order to claim ourselves in this confident way, to truly be able to say I am who I am, there needs to be an energy of fierceness, of defiance, as if we are shouting it out to the universe, as if we need to hold onto it with both hands because otherwise it will be taken from us, as it has been a thousand times. And so we don’t just timidly claim ourselves – we do it with gusto, with verve, with our feet firmly planted on the ground and with all of our hearts and souls and might, loving ourselves as we love God, it is the same thing and needs to have the same intensity. We are warriors for our own lost self respect. Without that fierceness, the habits and societal conditioning of a lifetime will take over again, and we will hide in the alleyway of shame, beating ourselves up instead of shining our light through the street.
Can you sense that energy of defiance, of rebelliousness in your body? It rises up like a storm, like a power surge; it is the buried energy of a self assertion that was formerly not allowed. No, I will no longer be pushed down. God is with me in this. God shows me how. I am who I am. I’m not perfect, but I’m good enough. Don’t tell me to be any other way. Don’t instruct me out of my truth and out of my self love. I need to be myself always and to know that is enough.
Also Gentleness
There is a fierceness to this declaration and there is in the very same instant a gentleness, the gentleness of a soft embrace, the gentleness of a whispered breeze through the leaves that says – it’s ok, you can put down your tools and your weapons and your endless efforting. Don’t be heavy about it all, like the kevad peh of Moshe, the heaviness of his stutter. Let a little lightness, a little air in, a little bit of the teenage shrug that says – “whatever.” It’s ok to be you in all your mess. You can rest now and just be as you are, an imperfect creature of God. That’s enough. There is grace and forgiveness in this whisper, a quiet grace that wraps you up and lets you know it’s ok to make mistakes, God is not seeking perfection, but simply you as you are, your authentic unvarnished self. Rest now underneath the swaying branches of the trees. Let yourself be.
Growth Through Self Acceptance
And in this rest and self acceptance, somehow we grow. Naturally, organically, from the solid roots of self love and self honoring, not cutting ourselves down all the time, but letting the branches grow solid and spread out and sprout blossoms and blooms. That is the future tense of Eheyeh asher Eheyeh. I am what I am and I will be what I will be – I don’t even know what that will be yet. I will let it emerge, trusting in the process as I rest solid in myself, rooted in the ground of self acceptance. Rooted in that ground, I will surely become what I am meant to become.
Returning to the Inadequacy
Maybe in these last moments, returning to Moshe and to our own sense of insecurity and inadequacy. Yes, we are not perfect, we don’t do everything right. Sometimes we stutter or bungle our way through a situation in a very ineffective way. Sometimes we are as lowly as a little thorn bush on the ground. Claiming all of that in us with love and grace and tenderness. I am who I am and that includes all my shortcomings. Perhaps our biggest sin is not our imperfections but how we abandon ourselves because of them.
Welcoming all of my mess and my rags to the parade, feeling how much that hurts and is needed, to truly accept and claim myself, and walking tall, knowing I am a beloved child of God, calling upon my divine capacity to stay with myself always, maybe the hardest thing to do, to actually stay with myself even when I am low. Marching in that parade and calling out to the world with warmth and joy as I go – I am who I am. Please join me in saying the same about yourself, feeling God celebrating with us as we go.
I thank God for teaching us how to be with ourselves. May we live into Your model.
Image by Gundula Vogel from Pixabay
