Capacity

I am the weaker vessel. I am less strong than my husband and more needy. I fall apart relatively easily and need lots of support. I continually find that I don't have the bandwidth for all of the activities that other people do, or even for all of the responsibilities on my plate. I get tired easily. I need a lot of sleep, and food, and alone time. Take any of that away and I am a mess. When I get into a mess, it also takes me long time to recover from it. My capacity is just low. My limited capacity has persistently bothered me, and I am still reckoning with it.

I heard a sermon some time ago about spiritual gifts, and about how God gives believers capacity and then fills it. Fills it. Even a small capacity. If I believe that God is perfect, and I do (at least at a head level), that means my small capacity is not a mistake. It means God has given me everything I need, and that I do not need to grasp for more. It means that I can do everything God calls me to do in his strength (and likely that all that capacity expanding stuff is not for me.) After all, 2 Peter 1:3 says: "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness" (New International Version). 

If God has given me everything I need, that means that God's gift of grace is just right for my capacity. Instead of mourning my lack, I can give thanks for God's sufficiency. As Ephesians 4:7 "But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it." In Romans 11:29, the Apostle Paul writes, "God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable." If God has filled my capacity for my calling, my capacity is not going to change. So I had better get to work accepting it, and maybe on cutting out the things that surpass it.

How I see my capacity affects how I use it. If I see myself as lacking, I am either sitting around mourning my lack, or striving for more, working outside my gifting and calling. Neither one brings honor to God. Mourning my lack is like burying my talent. (See the parable in Matthew 25:14-30). It says that God might have made a mistake. And operating outside my calling says the same, or that I think I can somehow outsmart the way God wired me. It is not going to work. I remember reading something Kylie Mitchell wrote about her husband saying, 'You don’t know your capacity until you’re past it.” Recognizing symptoms of being past capacity means I have a lot of bailing out to do. That does not reserve time or space or energy to do what calls me to do.

So what is God calling me to do? To be faithful with my gifts. To be faithful to where God has called me. With my limited capacity, or maybe what I should rephrase as my God-given capacity, that means basically means three things: following God, working, and being faithful to the calling of marriage. Not much, if you ask some. Honestly, too much if you catch me on my bad days. But this capacity of mine, these responsibilities, are what God has given me. May I learn to be content, so that God can truly fill and use me as He (not I!) sees fit.