The Gift of Limitations (Zondervan, 2024)
Sara Hagerty, a lifetime love of words, titles her latest book The Gift of Limitations: Finding Beauty in Your Boundaries. Until we find ourselves face-to-face with them, limitations function as often invisible but unyielding forces in our lives. As a result, we live in the tension of too much and not enough. Thus, we think that our discomfort comes from our limits. However, our fence line serves as a signpost that directs our attention to what’s inside it. Above all, our fence line protects us. Our fence line, the gift of limitations, directs our eyes to the now. To the far better things ahead. Wonder comes from growth and curiosity.
Yet, as you face your limitations, daydreaming accompanies your coping strategies. Consequently, you need to invite God’s input and wisdom regarding those daydreams. In addition, Sara exhorts, train your eyes to see the beauty you seek inside the fence line. Not outside. Because it takes the sequestered life inside the fence line to find your home in Jesus. Furthermore, God’s pattern for growth is often slow and circular; not always upward and onward. As Lord over our limitations, God also possesses intimate knowledge of how such limits feel. But we resent, work against, resist, and attempt to overcome our limits. Most significantly, brushes with God settle us — make sense of what feels senseless. So, we no longer need to reach lower than the sky for what we can touch, create, and spin that feels and looks like God.
Therefore, when you can name what’s hard, you establish a place to invite God. You begin to live with your God-given story. Rather than wrestle with it. And when your heart settles into peace with the gift of limitations, you find genuine trust in God. For minor paper cuts block you from experiencing the nearness of Jesus. Through every cloud, Jesus wants us to unlearn something. The night, the dark, becomes the place we fall asleep in His peace. Jesus whispers, His Word interrupts our thoughts. As we pay attention to what God cares about, a gentle process of excavating takes place. Thus, our hidden navigators lose muscle when we talk to God about them. If we let it, self-awareness leads to God awareness.
In conclusion, Sara stresses, slowing still provides the invitation when what we have fails to stretch over what is needed. Also, slowing still comes to us in the form of things we view as fences. And it represents the real part of partnering with God. Hence, we become less productive, accomplished, and masterful. But we find ourselves more present, alive, and peaceful. God’s Word serves as a counterbalance to thoughts that run contrary to the truth of the Bible. So, God’s Word changes how we see the fence line. And we need much more of God’s touch than our adult selves tell us. Therefore, Sara exhorts, simply let God wrap His fingers around yours and lead you to surrender. Finally, this place where God finds us, where we see Him seeing us, is inside the fence line.
