A Roman's Road to Grace

Ever since that fateful day two years ago, when I opened my unwilling mouth to admit sins kept secret for fifteen years, I have loved the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans.  I remember that my reading had brought me several chapters into the book before Grace shattered my carefully constructed world.  When I picked my Bible up again, every verse glowed at me with a life I had never seen in color.  I cried at the beauty overwhelming my tired soul, and laughed aloud through my tears at the sudden freedom.

"Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!"  If my soul could have spoken its reaction to the world during this time, these would have been its words.  Oh, the depths of the riches!  Even as a believer, even as Christ is changing you over the years and opening your eyes to the new and the wonderful, you can still live in a shadow.  It is all too easy to work towards righteousness on your own strength.  With Paul I could boast of my pitiful standards, always deceiving myself into believing that my works pleased God.  Never realizing my works were filth before His glory.  Never realizing that He didn't want my burnt offerings.  Never realizing that He wanted me.

One of the trees outside my window has refused, all this fall, to let her leaves turn color.  She has been nearly as green as in the summer, even after the other trees lost their leaves and stood stark and gray against the November earth.  But it snowed last night, the leaves froze on the branches, and now the ground is carpeted green, leaves fallen all at once.  It was such a November for me two years ago.  Refusing my humanity, denying my weakness, somehow keeping my green leaves long after they should have fallen.  It was such a November for me, fifteen years too long, before the frozen storm thawed my proud heart in a single night.  Die, to live.  No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

No condemnation!  I, who above all deserved condemnation!  I, who had hidden even from myself the depth of my guilt over the confines of years.  It all burst upon me with curious intensity now, and I was left gloriously shell shocked.  Where sin increased, grace now abounded all the more.  This harlot, who had been forgiven much, learned at last to love much.  For who will bring a charge against God's elect?

Oh, the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God.  This grace.  This widening, ever expanding, always limitless grace, separating my clinging sin from me as far as the east is from the west.  I did not understand.  But for the first time I understood.  In one gut wrenching, perfect frame of time and space, I knew both the magnitude of my own depravity and the all encompassing, death defying, astronomical strength of a freedom I had never realized.  

I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  I am convinced of it, because I, wretched woman that I am, was unable to be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord.  The words soared on wings that shielded me.  Abba!  Father!

I read Romans with new eyes that November.  I feasted on the Word that had once become flesh and died for my sin.  I drank deeply the wine that flowed over my guilt, and every word was a gift, and every grace was a miracle, and all things were grace, for from Him and through Him and to Him were all things.

And such they are still.  May I remember the eyes that saw so clearly, that November two years ago.  May I remember the heart that held so tightly onto living words with the desperate joy of one long-starved for this one central truth.  May I never forget the furious grace that destroyed deceptive chains.  Who will set me free from the body of this death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

A Caterpillar's Question

"Who are you?" said the Caterpillar.

Being told all your life to be yourself can be restricting.  Who am I?

I am only too eager to be different, if what I think I am is my identity.  I want to be smarter, wiser, more open, more gracious, always more of what I deem good and less of what I deem bad.  Less private, less awkward, less uncomfortable.  By some God-ordained miracle I escaped from the too common obsession with beauty of a physical and even sexual nature~what could I do about a flyaway shock of red hair and large hands anyway?  Inner beauty is what I have been told to value~goodness, truth, intelligence~and value it I have, to the detriment of all else more grace-filled.

Because of course, constant reminders of inner beauty reminds a young heart that she is filled only with the ugly.  Don't look.  Too dark for holy eyes to see.  "Confidence is the sign of a Godly woman," I heard sharp voices declare, ignorant of the shrinking girl at the edge of the circle.  Already fearful of letting others see, that giveaway lack of confidence grew exponentially, a cloud of anxiety darkening above a young soul.

"You!" said the Caterpillar contemptuously.  "Who are you?"

Who are you? Asked a wise, drugged up caterpillar of a confused girl.  The same caterpillar, this time dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt and carrying books of systematic theology.
Who are you?

Not good enough.
Not smart enough.
Not wise enough.

We fight a battle, not against the innocent others who speak thoughtlessly, but against the merciless, grinning forces of evil who take careless words and spin tales of such worthlessness that battle after battle in this bloody war is lost at a single withering glance.

I seem doomed to failure.  The flaming arrows have for so long pierced my thin faith that I know unmistakably my own wretched ignorance in all that I most wish to be most knowledgeable.  Words continue to come slowly when I most wish for the articulation and clarity to communicate my own thoughts.
Who are you?

Not smart enough.
Not wise enough.
Not good enough.

I don't know how to step outside of my own viewed incompetency into a better understanding of my own skills.  I try to show people what I see and am only frustrated by their dismissal of my sight as warped.  But what is true.  Who am I.  Why do I not understand the truth from outside of myself that others claim to know?
Who are you?

Not wise enough.
Not good enough.
Not smart enough.

Wrestling with my inadequacy makes my shame ever more tangible.  Where is the confident woman of inner beauty who I am supposed to represent?  This fearful specter of some Victorian imagination haunts me with her gentle smile and perfect poise.  She understands the philosophies of ages past, recites all the grandest poetry, argues ever graciously her perfect opinion with easy clarity, and I hate her.  I hate this creature who stands by my elbow wherever I go and corrects my reality with her own falsehood.

Who am I?  Flesh and blood, faulty, hilariously real.  A sinner, bought with Son.  Entirely bought.  No longer slave to mortality and frail faith.

Who am I, asks Valjean in a far grander melody than my own.  Who are you, asks the Caterpillar with obvious scorn.

Who am I?
Not good enough.  Imperfect.  Faulty, but covered in faultless blood.  Once dead, but now alive by Grace alone (around which all other things orbit). I am holy who by her own power is only the chief among sinners.  I stand before all my imagined juries of disapproval and judgment with the grace to be brought to me at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Keep smoking that hookah, Caterpillar.  Keep reciting your classifications and sage advice, flannel shirted one.  Keep pursuing that inner beauty, you sharp but womanly tongues.

I wear the righteousness of Christ.

Much Sin, Much Grace

It is surely wrong to wish sin on anyone, but the temptation is there, when I know how sin brought me to realization of grace.  While I tremble in fear to wish the deep and obvious sin of my own heart, I think that surely a more accurate view of self-depravity may be desired.  Still, strange as it sounds, I have had occasion to pity people for not having the power hungry struggle that I have with obvious, degrading, disheartening evil in my heart.  Deception comes easily for me.

I wish people would be able to grasp reality without the pain and fear I have put myself through, but there is part of me that knows: The worst thing in my life was the best thing for my life.  From much sin, I found much grace.

Sometimes people suffer from a righteousness that exceeds their own abilities--a crushing legalism of superiority.  I wish they could be free.  I wish they could have that one shattering moment of confession to dramatic failure of years past and present, and experience the stark otherworldly emptiness of a vessel cracked after a lifetime of stagnation.  I want that moment for them, when they walk under a night sky and look at the stars with the new and numbing knowledge that nothing stands between them and their Creator.  

I want these people to see the world as if for the first time~the world they've taken for granted all these years, because, you know, they're just children of the King and this is their home.  This palace of earth is where we grew up, so maybe the novelty is lost on us until we have that moment of Grace Come Down.  I guess I wish people would know firsthand the absence of honesty, just so they could experience its liberation and health with its sweeping fullness of gratitude.

Dear me.  I want people, these people, us people, you people, to have at least one moment where joy is so overwhelming that there is no response sufficient.  That your face might shine with God's own presence, because, for the first time, God gives you a glimpse of how little you deserve and how overpowering is His love for you.  For you, His child.  How I wish for this to happen for each one of us.

Redemption of an entire life's worth of unconfessed, unacknowledged, fearful lowness...there are no words to express it.  I can only continue to hope for these many others to experience it.  For you, many others.  I can only continue to hope that the worst thing in many lives be turned into the greatest gift~as mine was~the discovering of grace become embodied.  And may we all be stripped of our restrictive false righteousness to find fullness of joy in His presence.

All is grace.

The Sometimes Hardness

What do you say to the sometimes biting hardness of God's always love?  Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.  Every moment.

How do I comfort with the trite and the condescending when all my heart wants to do is break?  How do I tell friends about stately sovereignty when all they feel is the lack of their darling child?  How do I speak of abundance when I watch years roll by within a few short days?

I don't know.  I do not speak well in the first place.  I stumble over the pronouncing of my vast ideas.  I write my love out of the fear of being unloved.  Yet oftener, words must be spoken to be heard and I can't hide behind the covers of my journal forever.  Loving must be verbal even if I do not know what to say.

II Corinthians 1 speaks of a God who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we might be able to comfort those in any affliction with the comfort with which He Himself also comforts us.  As we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so we share abundantly in His comfort.  Abundantly.

The word haunts me.  Always abundance.  We share this abundance of suffering, of comfort, of Christ.  Our cup overflows.  Goodness and mercy follow us all of our lives, not as passive onlookers but as interested habits clinging to our paths with the diligence of God-sent dignitaries.  Grace is not disinterested.  

I know these things.  I write them out to myself.  I hang them on my walls.  Chesterton and Donne speak to me out of illustrated passages, hung where I am reminded of their truths.  And yet I cannot speak them.  My mind sails upon thought and swirls new ideas into its current but the words will not be right and I am afraid to speak lest I hurt where I most wished to heal.

Oh for the grace to speak what must be said, and to show the love that I feel.  

Blessings are given, blessings are taken, blessings are withheld, and it is all Grace.

And forever and forever,

   As long as the river flows,

As long as the heart has passions,

   As long as life has woes;   

The moon and its broken reflection

   And its shadows shall appear,

As the symbol of love in heaven,

   And its wavering image here.

~Longfellow, from The Bridge

While the Coffee Brews

The last thing I want to do when I am angry is be thankful.  Today, breathing flames, I sat down at the table and opened a small Mickey Mouse notebook, less than the width of my hand, and resolutely wrote, "freckles on a nose," next to the circled number 83.

It was hot.  The day was long.  There had been too many days of too little to be done.  This particular brother and I were beginning not to see eye to eye, and we finally had it out about the vacuuming that was not being accomplished.  I cleaned (because that's what I do when upset) while he finished his task, and when I was sure I was of clear mind, I assigned the extra work that he would not want to do.  He collected the eggs that I required, then ran upstairs to put off the rest of the chore.  I began brewing a pot of afternoon coffee, then sat at the kitchen table with my miniature notebook and one of my favorite pens. 

84. a mind of his own

85. grace to extend

86. temper as red as mine

With those numbered lines came memories of a fiery redheaded girl who, like one young brother years later, said things in hot haste and fought long the imagined injustice of her world.  The coffee maker gurgled peacefully.

87. quiet to soften heart

88. coffee as black as ever

89. memories of my own childish temper

The silence of a summer afternoon fell around me.  I got mugs off the shelf.  I called up the stairs to the boys that I had coffee done, warning them not to bounce too hard off the walls when they drank it.  The first thing that my brother said as he walked into the kitchen?

"I'm sorry I was a grouch to you again."

I told the boys my story about not wanting to do a task, about the temper of a ginger child when she thought she was wronged.  We understood each other.  The tension was gone.

Then one boy used a quarter cup of honey in his coffee and moved extraordinarily fast, the other drank his entire mug before I sat down and said his eyes couldn't focus on anything, and we all three laughed very hard.  I continued to sit at the table after they left.

97. relationship restored until next time

98. coffee hastily swallowed

99. caffeinated young brothers

Redemption doesn't just happen once.  Sometimes, it seems like nothing I do or say is right.  That most of my words in relationships are apologies.  But redemption in relationship is grace upon grace.  Thank God for redemption.  For reconciliation between brother and sister.  For all the emotions of relationship, happening while the coffee brews.

One Year Ago

I walked out of the sanctuary and Wendy reached out for me.  I burst into tears, overcome by so many emotions at once, not knowing what to think or feel.  The woman who had spoken to us about freedom seemed to fly down the church length to fold me up and speak directly to my heart.
"That was one of the most beautiful, open, vulnerable, stirring testimonies I have ever been privileged to witness." Her hands cupped my tear stained face firmly and she looked boldly into my eyes, daring lies to try to take me now.
"You are a beautiful picture of redemption," she told me, into my years of aching heart, "you take one of my cards and stay in touch with me."  I had a ministry and a gift of communication that God was going to use, she said, as the tears would come and I didn't even try to stop the sobbing.  There was a freedom in not holding myself in.  This woman I respected held me close and prayed for me and spoke the dark away and I could not speak because my heart was too full and my voice could not be found after its loud confessed proclamation.

It has been a year since I stood in front of a church of women and told them the truth I had concealed so well all my life.  People knew before that I was a sinner, but I had to tell them just how much of a sinner stood in their midst, opening her heart and giving them a target for their arrows of judgment and hostility.  But grace always surprises me.  My smallness was made big and I heard chains breaking and felt lives shaking and not only was I blessed to witness the changes, but I was overwhelmingly blessed to be part of their freedom stories.

All those years of deep pain and inability to feel closeness--and fear, always fear, of people knowing me.  Suddenly all of it took on meaning I could never have dreamed.

And all this time later I ask God why the heartache and hurt of the now, and He reminds me of His past works and even my sin is sovereignly declared from the beginning.  So much changes, always changes, but He is the same.  Into His sameness of reality I will walk, ever closer to a Truth more true even than myself.  I take those deliberate steps through trembling, and He always knows what He has prepared for me.