My overarching lesson from the World Race thus far is one that I honestly thought I had mastered.
I didn't necessarily write the book on it, but I have written the blog (see "the grace to be who you are").
If you've ever talked spirituality or Christianity with me, you've likely gotten an earful about it.
When I talk to people about my story, I tell them it's the thing that has changed my life more than anything else, and yet I find that in the last two months I've lived little of my life believing it to be true.
grace.
I love everything about grace as it's defined. The unmerited favor. The gift of what we don't deserve. The empowerment into becoming something we never could on our own. The smile in place of scorn. It's possibly the most powerful thing we have to extend to each other and definitely one of God's most powerful instruments in changing hearts. Extending grace is something I have come to find the most joy in because quite honestly, condemnation has accomplished very few positive things in my life and the lives of those around me.
People only want to be seen, accepted and loved despite who they are and for who they are,
and grace does all of that.
The catch here is that I've spent the last few years preaching on this soapbox of grace, listening to people's stories and darkest secrets, trying to be a safe place for their words to land, attempting to be the person that could hear anything and offer the same smile, compassion and hug regardless of story or sin or shortcoming, practically dedicating my spiritual life to accepting people where they are and loving them into who they could be;
and I've rarely let grace touch me.
Not deeply.
Not truly.
I've been baffled by this revelation in the last few weeks as I've searched for the reason behind the subconscious terror that was driving me every day telling me that everyone is out to get me, that I'm not good enough to be on the Race, that the leaders were looking for the first reason to send me home just lurking in the shadows and waiting for me to stumble so they could put me on a plane. After being on the defense for two months and finding myself exhausted and hating everyone, I finally realized that I didn't expect that anyone would have the grace for me that I was so anxious to give.
That means I wasn't expecting any grace from where it counts. I recently journaled a sentence in frustration that sums up how I'd been feeling.
mercy seems too impossible to be 'new every morning,'
and Love seems to highlight my shame too brightly for my pride to bear."
It's nearly unfathomable for me to think that grace could actually cover my own sin.
Cognitively I know that is untrue, but the way I've been living would suggest otherwise. I find it challenging to receive much of anything, but receiving grace is infinitely more difficult for me because grace intensifies shame.
Because its very nature is inexhaustible pardon, grace forces us to look into a compassionate face that we've just slapped, to fall into gentle arms of one we've just mocked, to hear "I love you" when we've cut to the heart with hot words of hatred and contempt.
That doesn't make us feel great; rather small, childish, immature and ugly instead.
What I'm learning, then, is that to receive grace is itself an act of humility. I have been prideful enough before Grace to say that it is not sufficient for me. Not for my sin. Doesn't God know what I've done? Who I've been? Who I've hurt, cut down, used, objectified, lied to, manipulated? In that same vein, what it's also exposed is my inability to remain self-sufficient. Learning to receive grace has shown me that I actually might need it and that I might not be able to single-handedly conquer myself and the world around me.
Grace could never extend as far as me.
Never me.
That's entirely too good to be true and too humiliating for me to receive.
However, receiving grace asks us to lay down our swords and admit that the fight is not ours to win. God is asking that we let him be who he is while we recognize and respect our humanity, our inability to do anything of ultimate importance without him. God is asking for us to admit our need for him.
By the same token, receiving grace allows us to stand safely behind the One with the real sword who has already won the fight. God is using his divinity and sufficiency to stand in place of our helpless humanity and his ability and overwhelming desire to do everything of ultimate importance for us when we had no other way. God is giving us all of himself because he knows we do need him, and he gives freely, without hesitation and with great delight.
And he does it because we're the sheep of his pasture.
His covenant people.
His beloved bride, the Church.
He extends us grace simply because we are his. And that's enough, if we can let our guard down enough to trust his sufficiency over our own.
That's a scary thing to accept.
It's much easier to live on the defense, never trusting anyone but yourself, never letting down enough to suppose that someone might actually love you as you are.
BUT.
As we are.
We're enough.
In a way, that really is too good to be true.
And yet it's not.
At all.
working on receiving and in awe of grace,
m
