“We have all failed, not only because we have sinned,
but because we have thought it wise to keep tabs at all.”

-Danielle Shroyer, as quoted in “Attached to God” by Krispin Mayfield, p. 135

I’m breaking up with this advice: “Stop and think.”

I have stopped to think and here I remain, thinking. It’s time for me to go and not think. I have lived my whole life under a microscope, evaluating everything. This is exhausting, cold, dehumanizing. It’s like looking in one of those concave mirrors that magnifies skin pores, obsessing over the health of each one. No wonder I’m weary.

The alternative is to zoom out a bit and smile. Zoomed out I see a face, a person, a life. God is inviting me to stop. evaluating. everything.

And I feel the freedom. “It is for freedom that Christ has set [me] free” (Galatians 5:1a, NIV). Imagine an unevaluated life. Just a life. Safe and free and homey. And maybe a little daring and vulnerable. I want to model this to my kids: an unevaluated life; a different way than school and work and self-help books, where everything is examined, measured, and labeled. “Bad.” “Good.” “Better.” “Best.” What if nothing was labeled? Imagine the chaos, the freedom, the delight. Imagine the curiosity, the seeing, the open hands receiving.

My calm and whole center where I know I’m okay seems to be growing. One morning I moved to it from a very distracted and unruly mind, and the calm felt bigger than it used to. In this holy center I don’t need to prove my worth or earn my keep. I am truly, deeply okay. In a strange way I feel perfect. The tension between where I am and where I ought to be doesn’t exist here. Imagine—a place where evaluation and measuring are a foreign concept. Breathing, smiling—these things come more easily.

If I can be free from scrutiny, how about everyone else? I feel a growing desire to stop evaluating others. I want to invite them to live freely, to zoom out and smile. See something beautiful here. Stop thinking for a minute—it’s revolutionary.