Grace

Undeserving. Unworthy. Not good enough.

Have you ever felt that way?

A couple of Saturdays ago, I laid down to nap while the kids napped. I was so exhausted and needed sleep badly. Almost every day, there are a couple of hours in the afternoon of pure, lovely silence for napping, working, blogging, cleaning, cooking...just alone time. I rarely choose the nap option, but on that day, I couldn't think of anything else.

As you might suspect, it didn't happen. After an 18-mo-old talked and played for 2 hours, a stranger rang our doorbell and a phone rang, I RELUCTANTLY gave up. B had been working in the yard and came in to find an irritable, grumpy version of myself. It makes me sad to think of how short and ugly I was to my family because I was tired and didn't get my way. As I sat there being pitiful, not wanting to do anything, I was ashamed of how I was acting and yet seemingly unable to change it. B took the kids out to play and told me to go try to lay down again.

When I woke, he rounded us all up in the car and started driving. We ended up at the beautiful lake not far from here. On a peninsula overlooking the water. With a full picnic dinner made by this man that I had just been ugly to. My eyes filled with tears, realizing how much love he has for me despite the way I acted. I felt God's love through him...a real life example of His grace.

grace, n.: the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God

The next morning in church, we celebrated Palm Sunday. As we took communion and remembered Christ's sacrifice for us, I was overwhelmed with thoughts of shame... "I am so undeserving, unworthy...I am not good enough for you, God!" My eyes poured tears as I remembered His body and blood, broken and shed for me, so that I can be in heaven forever with Him...despite the way I act. My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude.

We are studying Isaiah in Sunday school right now and I have this passage marked up to say:

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Yet it was my weaknesses he carried; it was my sorrows that weighed him down. And they thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! But he was wounded and crushed for my sins. He was beaten that I might have peace. He was whipped, and I was healed! I have strayed away like sheep. I have left God's paths to follow my own. Yet the Lord laid on him my guilt and sins.

Isaiah 53:4-6

Yes, I am undeserving, unworthy and SO not good enough.

But He loves me still. Thank you, Jesus.