There is Such a Word as Can't.

It’s Friday as I write this, and I’m having a “can’t” day. I can’t seem to get anything right. I can’t be creative, I can’t get the hang of Onedrive and its insatiable desire to save everything in four different places, I can’t cope with the news, I can’t do anything to help those in the camps in the USA and I can’t bear the things that we are doing to ourselves or the planet. I haven’t been able to write all day and I’m hot and hormonal, which means something very different than it did 25 years ago. I can’t spell either, having just typed “sumthing,” and fortunately spotting it before the end of the sentence. I just can’t.

And you know what? The second I just gave it up to God and said, “Okay, look, today I just can’t,” I started to relax a bit. Not completely, because, you know, heat and hormones and software, but just a little bit. And then a wonderful thing happened. I stopped trying. I embraced the can’tness of the day and went with it. I cried about all the awful things that are happening in the world and breaking my heart and offered that up as a prayer. I determined to light a candle for those families in concentration camps in the USA in the 21^st century, and offered that up as prayer. And I just rested (literally, as I have to several times a day) in my can’tness, recognising and honouring the CAN of God.

A day like today is hard for me because it is all too familiar. My long-term illness means there have been several thousands of days where I was too sick to even attempt anything more constructive than feeding myself. Which means the frustration on a day with less physical pain and a bit more energy where I’ve achieved zilch and written nothing, where the builders over the road meant I couldn’t even attempt any art, is even more exasperating. But it is days like these that show me a biblical truth that I need to come back to very often. Outside of God I can do nothing. It’s not that I need to not have days like this and somehow that magically I will triumph as I live out my saintly life in the embrace of his ability, as some Christians who constantly say, “Through him I can do all things!” like to pronounce. No. Because actually, this is horrible to go through but on an occasional basis it does me good. I need to live in my inability some of the time. Otherwise I don’t see the majesty and capability of God for what it is.

When we’ve been given creative gifts or ministries, maybe it’s even more important to come back to the truth of our smallness often, otherwise we can mistake our achievements for our own. They’re not. Everything I am and do is God’s. Even my breath was a gift that he will one day reclaim. So, on days like today, when I just need to give up, curl up and cry, that’s what I’ll do. And I will lay that before the one who CAN, as a paltry offering, and let it humble me. I’ll call it a fast from doing, or succeeding, or achieving. It will create a holy pause before God picks me up again and takes me onwards.

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a disabled writer and artist with a passion for poetry, mysticism, story and colour. Her writing features regularly on spiritual blogs and in literary journals. Her full-length publications include Garden of God’s Heart and Whale Song: Choosing Life with Jonah. She has a new book coming out with Paraclete Press next year. Keren lives in South East England and is mainly housebound by her illness.

Image from  Pixabay