And you have a bad day. Like your world is literally crumbling all over. You just can't hold up anymore, ya know. Get it all done. All your work. Love as much as you long to. Communicate with friends and family as much as you deeply desire. Give. Learn to take. Be forgiving. Meet deadlines. Be still. Can't be still. Be positive. Too tired. Wake up earlier. Exercise? I hate my weight. New clothes? More money. The kids! What about the kids? I wanna give all. I want them to enjoy reading. Why don't they remember to show instead of tell. I want to protect them from the pressures of the box. I want to read too. And oh, the pressure. Don't you dare complain. Don't you dare break. No one understands.
And you forget to breathe. You fall on your face trying to hold it all up. Gasping for air. You finally sit down for the night. Thankful for a morsel of peace. A comfy couch. Warm apartment. A book called "Traveling Mercies" that is about a woman. And her faith. So raw. Comforting. And God's Grace is sufficient...
"Alone in my hotel room later that night, I felt stricken and lurky and dark, a wallflower at the vampire's ball. I cried a little then closed my eyes, bowed my head, and whispered, "Help."
Out of nowhere I remembered something one of my priest friends had said once, that grace is having a commitment to-or at least an acceptance of-being ineffective and foolish. That our bottled charm is the main roadblock to drinking that cool glass of love.
I do not understand the mystery of grace-only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.
One of the things I've been most afraid of had finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching, and it had indeed been a nightmare. But sitting with all that vulnerability, I discovered I could ride it. I felt ungainly, the way Marlon Brando looked on those ice skates, but at least I was on my feet. I had come through.
I don't know why life isn't constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and our kids do scary things. I don't know why it's not more like the movies, why things don't come out neatly and lessons can't be learned when you're in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging.
What I wanted was acclaim, and what I got was Grace."
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."
Raw testimonies are so powerful.-the Living Word.
"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives, even unto the death."
The definition of testimony...proof or evidence that something exists or is true
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
I won't move to Australia...
(In reference to Alexander and Terrible, Horrible, No Good. Very Bad Day.)
And you forget to breathe. You fall on your face trying to hold it all up. Gasping for air. You finally sit down for the night. Thankful for a morsel of peace. A comfy couch. Warm apartment. A book called "Traveling Mercies" that is about a woman. And her faith. So raw. Comforting. And God's Grace is sufficient...
"Alone in my hotel room later that night, I felt stricken and lurky and dark, a wallflower at the vampire's ball. I cried a little then closed my eyes, bowed my head, and whispered, "Help."
Out of nowhere I remembered something one of my priest friends had said once, that grace is having a commitment to-or at least an acceptance of-being ineffective and foolish. That our bottled charm is the main roadblock to drinking that cool glass of love.
I do not understand the mystery of grace-only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.
One of the things I've been most afraid of had finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching, and it had indeed been a nightmare. But sitting with all that vulnerability, I discovered I could ride it. I felt ungainly, the way Marlon Brando looked on those ice skates, but at least I was on my feet. I had come through.
I don't know why life isn't constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and our kids do scary things. I don't know why it's not more like the movies, why things don't come out neatly and lessons can't be learned when you're in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging.
What I wanted was acclaim, and what I got was Grace."
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."
Raw testimonies are so powerful.-the Living Word.
"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives, even unto the death."
The definition of testimony...proof or evidence that something exists or is true
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
I won't move to Australia...
(In reference to Alexander and Terrible, Horrible, No Good. Very Bad Day.)
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