But by the grace of God

Several years ago I ran across the most wonderful little book. It has since become one that I've shared with many of my confirmation students, countless kids on mission trips or youth functions, family and even friends. I originally stumbled across it and picked it up for a good friend, but ended up getting myself a copy as well. Needless to say my copy is showing it's use, with the pages starting to break free from the binding, and the cover getting a little beaten.

This book, Max Lucado's "God think's You're Wonderful", has become a staple for me because of the simplistic and yet beautiful way that it reminds me, reminds all of us really, about who God created us to be and our value in and to Him. Whenever I find myself forgetting or needing a gentle reminder that my Father is here with me, loving me, caring for me- I open up this book and read through it's pages.

Today for me grace meant coming back to this book and to it's messages of worth, love and purpose. It was a day that I desperately needed to loosen my grasp on the worth others and even myself were placing on me and to open my hands and heart to the worth that Christ gives me.

I had a very important meeting today. You see, since the time I was little I have felt a tug and call on my heart to become a pastor. Finally a couple years ago I listened to this call and both applied to seminary - where I was ultimately accepted- but also began the process of candidacy to be able to be ordained one day in the Lutheran Church. Yet life happened and the process has been paused as I've taken time to adjust to new aspects of life and to heal. Well, today was a meeting to discuss re-entering in to that process and it was one I was very anxious about. In my anxiety, thoughts of unkind words of others, negative events of the past, past judgments that have been made about me, etc flooded my mind and I started to question and doubt what I was even doing going to that meeting. What I was even doing considering this process and ultimately call.

Normally speaking, I probably would have sat with those ponderings and doubts for some time and psyched myself out or talked myself out of going. Today though, was different. Today it seems God had different plans for me and instead His grace flooded in. He calmed my anxious heart and helped me to hear the truths. He helped me to find grace for me and to seek out not only this book I mentioned but another that also is so good at reminding me not only who I am but WHOSE I am.

Even after the meeting went well and I left feeling excited and hopeful for what is next, it didn't take long though, for me to revert back to the thoughts I was having before I had gone. To the ones that were telling me a whole lot about me, without really being about me at all. And once  again with God's help, I was able to work to reject the lies and to dwell in the truth. It wasn't perfect. I did fall in to some of the old traps and I felt horrible about that. And yet again grace, to pick myself up, brush myself off and to remind myself that I am His.

Last night I went to bed too exhausted to share about the day. I hesitate to share loads about the day because for me, there was so much grace in simply saying "I need to just get some rest". As simple and short of an entry as that was, there was greatness to it, too.

Today as I think about that and the graces that did find me yesterday - as well as today- and as I think about my meeting, what I am most certain of is a theme that emerged in it of resurrection. A couple years ago I went through a death. It was a death to my old self. A death to some really difficult and painful past things that had nothing but closed me off to God's love and in to accepting who I was. Since then life has begun to open up and to be full of all this wonderful newness and new life, but not until after a period of grief and living in what had died. Not until after I took time to honor and dwell for a while in the loss of what I had known and to find the brevity and strength to move forward into the unknown and new.

Today I celebrate that resurrection I was given and that by God's grace I had and ultimately found that brevity and the courage to embark on the new journey God had set before me. I also celebrate, though, just having started this and coming here and something as simple as giving myself the grace to just take care of me and say I needed to go to sleep last night, because it wasn't all that long ago that something like that is something I couldn't have done.

Grace exists because perfection does not. At least not in us here. That is difficult for me because I so often wish I were or could be. I hate being broken, flawed and human. And yet I am who I am by God's grace and perfect love for me and it's because of that these days of grace thus far, small as some of the gestures have be, mean so much. Signify so much- in terms of me, my struggle, where I've been and where I am going.

"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of hem- yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me." 1 Cor. 15:10.

"But by the grace of God I am what I am..." What beautiful words. They are my truth and my grace today.