Follow the Leader?
Bean got into the pizza box last week. I turned around for maybe ten seconds and there he was, up on the table, tugging a piece toward the edge, Bugs right behind him waiting his turn. Neither of them thinks twice before going after whatever's in front of them — a dropped slice, a loose piece of chicken, each other's tails mid-wrestle in the bathtub, which is somehow still their favorite arena in the whole house. They're six months old. They don't know that some of what looks like food to them isn't food they can actually have, or that a stomach that small doesn't handle grease and cheese the way ours does. All they know is that it's there, and their instinct says go get it.
I don't fault them for it. That's what a kitten's instinct is for — curiosity, appetite, the pull toward whatever's in front of them. But instinct isn't the same thing as wisdom, and it never claims to be. Bugs and Bean are still learning that some things which seem worth chasing are actually best left alone, and until they know the difference, they need something instinct alone can't give them: a leader who can see further than they can.
It's not so different out among the plants. Claire, Coco, and Dusty — our foxtail palm, who hasn't had her own devotional yet, but has been part of this yard for a while now — could all likely eke out some sort of a survival somewhere in the wild without a single hand ever touching them. But that's not where they are. They're under our care, which means their thriving depends on more than their own effort to grow. It depends on Patricia and me showing up with the pole saw, the fertilizer, the stakes and cords, the willingness to notice when something's crowding something else before it becomes a real problem. Claire found that out the hard way when we let her sit five feet from Coco for too long — if you've read her story, you know how that one went. She wasn't lacking effort. She was lacking a leader paying close enough attention.
I've been sitting with that lately, because I think it's true of me too. Of most of us, honestly.
We live in a culture that hands us an enormous toolbox for fixing ourselves — coaching, therapy, habit trackers, morning routines, book after book promising that the answer was inside us the whole time, we just have to unlock it. I want to be careful here, because I mean this next part sincerely: much of that is genuinely good. I've used plenty of it myself, and been better for it. None of this is a case against self-improvement.
But there's a difference between tools that help you tend the garden and a belief that you can be your own gardener. And somewhere along the way, a lot of us — myself very much included — started treating ourselves as capable of doing both.
Paul ran into this problem long before self-help had a name. He was about as disciplined and devout as a person could be, a Pharisee's Pharisee, and still he wrote some of the most honest words in the New Testament: "For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing." (Romans 7:19) That's not a man who hadn't tried hard enough. That's a man who had tried about as hard as a human being can try, and hit the same wall every time. "What a wretched man I am!" he says. "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24)
Notice what he doesn't say next. He doesn't say, I found a better system. He doesn't say, I dug deeper and finally unlocked my potential. He says, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:25) The answer wasn't a stronger version of himself leading himself. It was surrender to a different leader entirely. "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free." (Romans 8:1–2)
That's the piece I think we quietly leave out. We'll gladly admit we need guidance in a hundred small ways — a coach for our habits, a therapist for our patterns, a planner for our days. But we tend to stop just short of admitting we need a Savior for our souls, because that means admitting we were never actually capable of being our own final authority in the first place.
Bugs and Bean don't know yet that they need a leader. Claire, Coco, and Dusty don't have a say in the matter — they simply need one, whether they know it or not. I'm the one who's supposed to know better. And knowing better means admitting that no amount of self-direction was ever going to get me where I actually needed to go.
"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2) Not a renewed strategy. A renewed mind — handed over, not self-generated.
Maybe you've been leading yourself for a long time, using every good tool available, and you're still standing in front of the same wall Paul described. If so, I don't think the answer is a better system. I think it's the same one Paul landed on: stop trying to be your own leader, and let yourself be led.