The last time you guys heard from me, I showed you just how much emotional baggage a person with no emotional baggage actually has. It’s surprisingly heavy to lug around all the time. I told you about reading The Shack and how it really impacted me with a passage about lies and how those lies that I tell myself on a daily basis affect my relationships with my teammates and my relationship with the Lord. Why should I leave the known for the unknown and risk so much without the guarantee of a return on my hard work? Why should I choose to depend on someone other than myself? Why take the risk? The answer to all of those questions is simple to say, but hard to live out.
Grace.
A very simple, concise answer without any fluff to make it sound more eloquent or intelligent. It sounds easy doesn’t it?
Yeah, that’s what I thought too before I had to practice it on a daily basis. Grace is hard. I make mistakes with it every day. I never seem to have enough. Not for my team and certainly not for myself.
I’m not Jesus (obviously), but this dude had Grace down pat. It boggles my mind that he had enough Grace for all of mankind even when he knew all the crap that we were going to do to him, to each other, to the Earth, and to ourselves. None of it is a very pretty picture. The striking difference between Jesus and myself is that he expected nothing in return for his Grace. He didn’t care that he was going to sacrifice so much for all of us and not be repaid. That’s the problem with my version of Grace. I’ll give you grace all day every day, but I expect a return on my investment. If I give you grace, you give me a relationship. You give me respect. You give me love. Jesus didn’t care if his investment in us yielded one return or one trillion returns. That’s why he is the only one who can give true Grace. That’s why my version of Grace with my teammates and myself has left me frazzled and broken. My version of Grace is conditional.
Something that has really helped me to come to this conclusion is actually a lyric from a Mumford & Sons song.
“You say that’s exactly how this Grace thing works. It’s not the long walk home that will change my heart, it’s the welcome I’ll receive at the restart.”
The journey to Grace doesn’t matter. The many times that people will let me down or the many times that I will let myself down or feel like I have failed don’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes we make, the only thing that matters is that we forgive, give Grace and “restart” anew and afresh. Grace doesn’t come from letting people walk in their mistakes and letting them “think about what they’ve done.” It’s about giving them the space to make those mistakes and still welcoming them back into your life and heart even after they’ve made the same mistake a thousand times. It’s not as easy as it sounds though and I’m still learning and I need a lot of space to make mistakes myself.
I don’t always know how to give Grace, when it’s needed, or when I need it. It’s not a set in stone thing that we can just plug into an equation. It’s real life. It’s messy and hard. It’s going to be uncomfortable, but in the end it will be worth it to climb out of my fortress and know that I am loved and that I am free to make mistakes. Thanks for all of you who give me Grace and allow me to make mistakes while I’m trying to figure out how this Grace thing works.
