Once upon a time there was a little girl who only ever wanted to be good. You know the kind, they dream of going to a big college and being who everyone else desires to be. Growing up, she never lived in the same place for more than a couple of years so she was always independent and hardly got attached to much. She knew that her parents, who struggled with a long string of substance abuse, run-ins with the law, bad relationships, and everything in between, needed her more than she needed them. So she was always the good one, doing her own thing, never complaining or causing any problems, never asking them to give her anything or do anything for her. Always handling things on her own, getting good grades, doing everything she needed to do to make a life for herself as different from the one she grew up in as she could get and ultimately to prove herself: to prove that she could be good, that she could be successful, and that she could be worthy of the attention and love that her parents could never give her.
However, as independent as she was (or tried to be), it was never enough. Sure, she was top of her class, President of the club that she was passionate about and an officer in several others, she played sports and did okay in them. She won all the awards she went after and was almost always one of the teacher’s favorites. She got into a prestigious program for honors students that would basically set her up for the future, she got plenty of scholarships to go to the college of her dreams, and people were proud of her. They told her so. She was on track to achieve everything she ever wanted for herself, but still it wasn’t enough.
How can that be? She was achieving everything she ever wanted for herself, how could that not be enough?
Because at the heart of all of her striving, though it seemed to be for the right things, was a scared little girl who only wanted to be accepted, but was rejected by herself.
Everyone handles things in their life differently. For me, I handle things by being fine. If you know me you’ve probably heard me say that a million times… “I’m fine, everything’s fine”. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it isn’t. Either way, I always say it with a smile that probably convinced you that it’s true. When I was younger, just after my parents had gotten divorced and then my grandmother passed away, I had a very kind woman, who may remember this moment, ask me how I was doing. I remember saying “I’m fine” (of course) and she said something that now looking back was pretty symbolic to my story: “No you’re not. I know you’re not, but that’s okay.”. At the time I just thought she was crazy and she didn’t know me very well. Obviously I’m strong, I’ve handled everything life has thrown at me so far, this doesn’t affect me, I’m fine. Little did I know, I wasn’t actually fine, and this mentality of just being “fine” with everything would come to hurt me in more ways than one.
When I was in middle school, I made the decision to be for real about Christianity. I remember being a mean little middle school girl like we all were back then when I did something to one of my best friends that I hated myself for. That was when I first learned about being humble enough to say I’m sorry and beg for forgiveness because I screwed up. I knew about Jesus before and knew that He could make me a better person so I decided then that I wanted to be a Christian and I was going to be serious about it, and I have been since then.
However, what I never fully grasped was the concept of grace. For me it was more of an equation, me + Jesus = a better me so obviously if my goal is to be this good, successful person that is worthy of love and acceptance then I need Jesus in there somewhere. I’ve spent most of my life trying to earn love and acceptance from my parents and myself and everyone else so of course it makes sense that I would have to earn it from Jesus too. He was perfect as a man, He’s the King of the Universe, He is worthy of all honor and praise, He’s not just going to accept someone like me without some work. No one does that, it wouldn’t make sense. I called Him savior sure and I knew the definition of grace, I was a stand-up church-goer after all, of course I knew all of these things. But in my heart I didn’t believe it. There’s no way someone like that would want someone like me without me working my butt off to be the “perfect Christian”. That fueled my drive even more.
Now the stakes are higher for me to be good, I have to or Jesus won’t accept me. I won’t really be a Christian if I don’t do my quiet time every single day, go to all the church camps, work VBS, be the servant that I know Jesus wants me to be and always put others ahead of myself, always be “good”, always make all the right decisions. One wrong one and I’m done, nobody will believe that I’m a Christian, not even me.
Then I messed up, big time.
This perfect girl, the one who organized and started a bible study for all the high school girls, the one who everybody said was “a great girl” “one of the most responsible kids I know”, someone who lots of people trusted and looked up to, the one who adults were always proud of, that girl is not who everybody says she is. She’s not who she wants to be. She’s not who she thinks she has to be. She’s not perfect. She’s not enough. She messed up.
I lost my virginity when I was 16. I know that will come as a shock to a lot of you. It came as a shock to me too. I could blame it on the guy, I could blame it on circumstances, I could blame it on any number of things, but the truth is I just messed up and it broke me for a long time. If you knew me when I was a senior in high school, I apologize because you probably didn’t like me… I know for a fact that I didn’t like me.
I knew that a lot of people did that and that it was actually pretty normal for the length of time that my boyfriend at the time and I had been together, but it wasn’t normal for me. Not the girl that always wanted, and thought she needed, to be perfect. For me, it was heart shattering. The Bible says to save sex for marriage so of course it’s normal to feel guilty and want to repent, but this was different. I carried a huge weight and a huge amount of shame for a long time. After that was one of the darkest times in my life, I felt like I had blown my chance to be a Christian, to be used by God like I wanted to and to be loved by Jesus or anyone else for that matter. I completely shut myself down. I didn’t want to be at school, I didn’t want to be at home, I didn’t want to be at church, I didn’t want to be anywhere where anybody could see me. I remember getting out of school and just driving around for hours until dark just so I didn’t have to go home. So nobody would ask questions, so I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I would cry at the drop of a hat any time, but those times I would park somewhere and ugly cry huge crocodile tears while I begged God to help me through it, all the while knowing in my heart that I didn’t deserve to be helped. When I actually did drive home, there were many more times than I care to remember when I would think about what it would be like to just hammer on the gas and let go of the wheel.
I went through all of this alone for months, never telling a soul, because I knew that if I hated me so much for it then anyone else would definitely hate me. Just like everything else in my life, I had to handle this one on my own. I had to be strong, I had to be fine, just like I always am. It wasn’t until someone that loves me very much (you know who you are, know that I appreciate you!!) called me out on it that I actually talked about it for the first time and faced it head on. Even now a lot of what I’m telling you I’ve never told anyone else before.
I don’t tell you all of this to make you feel sorry for me. In fact I’m sure that a lot of my story surprises a lot of you and I hope it does because I know that many of us would be surprised to learn what each other have gone through at different times in our lives. I tell you my story and open up to you in such a vulnerable way to say this: I was wrong. I’ve been wrong for a very long time. I believed the lie that I had to earn grace. I believed that I had to be perfect and make all the perfect decisions in order to be worthy of love and acceptance from my family, from my friends, from myself, and from Jesus. But what I didn’t understand is that I could never be enough. Eventually I would break and I would mess up, and I did. And it wrecked my world.
But you know what? Jesus was there. Right there where I thought He could never be, that’s exactly where He showed up the biggest in my life. He showed me that yeah I messed up and no He wasn’t happy about it, but He still loves me. I can have peace knowing that I still get to spend eternity with Him because He already paid the price that I could never pay and gave me the best gift for FREE. I don’t have to earn it. I don’t have to spend all of my time and energy trying to be the perfect student, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, the perfect Christian, because I will never be perfect and that’s okay because that’s where the story becomes beautiful: I don’t have to be, I was never expected to be.
Jesus knew when He took His cross to Calvary, bloody and beaten and broken, that I could never ever deserve what He was about to do. He knew that I would say one thing and do another. He knew that I would be mean to my friend when I was in 6th grade, He knew that I would lose my virginity when I was 16, He knew every mistake I would ever make. He already knew the very darkest parts of my life and of my heart that I always thought I had to work harder and harder to fix and He died for me anyways. And you know what He told me? He said you’re not broken. He said you don’t have to fix anything, because I already fixed it for you. He said you don’t have to earn anything, I already paid the price. He said you don’t have to be top of your class and teachers favorite and always “fine” because my grace, my free gift of grace, is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in your weakness. He said you don’t have to run and hide and handle everything on your own when you mess up, I know you and I love you and I’ve already forgiven you. I chose you. When I was suffering on the cross, I did that for YOU. I left the 99 to come and pursue YOU. Right where you are, as imperfect as you are and will always be. This whole time you’ve felt rejected and rejected yourself no matter what you did or how well you did it, but here’s a bit of truth: in me, you’re no longer rejected. You are redeemed.
God is good, y’all. I can’t imagine my life without Him. He took what was broken and tattered and dirty, He took me in at my worst, He picked me up and dusted me off and He redeemed me into something beautiful and worthy. And now He’s using me to spread His message of grace to the world. I am living proof that He makes diamonds out of dust and that He can use you for His glory no matter where you are or how much you’ve messed up. My God is big enough to do that.
My prayer is that each and every one of you would believe that about yourself. It took me about 18 years of working and striving and making lists and checking things off to finally even begin to understand and believe that. I pray that wherever you are in your life right now, you won’t waste any more time believing the lie that you could ever earn His grace, or that you have to. It’s free. All you have to do is accept it and let Him love you the way He died to love you: unconditionally.
