Sometimes, I suck.

“Sometimes, I suck.”

This is one of my favorite funny things our son, Nick, said when he was little. A few days earlier, our family had been chatting about candy. Rob prides himself on being disciplined enough to NOT crunch lollipops and other hard candies. He keeps a Jolly Rancher in his mouth long enough for it to become wafer-thin. I, on the other hand, crunch away at them within seconds. During this all-important family candy conversation, Elizabeth and Rob were identified as “suckers” and little Nicky and myself as “crunchers.”

It caught me off guard when, days later, our three-year-old made his “I suck” declaration.

“What do you mean, Buddy?”

“Sometimes I suck on candy. I don’t always crunch.”

Ahhh…apparently, the candy conversation had been weighing on his heart and it felt dishonest to be known solely as a cruncher.  Funny, sweet little boy.

This simple sentence has stuck with me -it makes me smile when I think of that day. But honestly, some days, I feel like the declaration applies to me – but not in the “candy sense.”

Sometimes, I suck.  Some days, I fail at stuff and feel like a loser. Some days, my attitude is awful and I am all kinds of out-of-sorts. Yesterday started off as one of those days.

Most of the time, I am well-adjusted about making mistakes and being my imperfect, awkward self. After all, I’ve been following Christ long enough to know that anything good or admirable about me is because of Him. I embrace being a fool for Christ, a clay pot. But some days, like yesterday, it seems the level of suckiness is higher or something. (Or maybe, it’s just that my tolerance for it is low?)

At any rate, it never takes too long to turn it around because I know this:

2 Corinthians 12:9