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I’ve been an athlete most of my life. My sport is softball, and I started playing the game later than some – that came as a freshman in high school.  But with two older brothers, I always wanted to be where they were – outdoors and being active.  As a little girl I loved to play Three Flies Up in the neighborhood with the boys, which is where my love for the feel of a baseball mitt began.  Ah, to hear the ball smack into the web of the glove was heavenly.  Hand-eye sports were my specialty…endurance sports, not so much. So in high school I played volleyball, softball and basketball.  I quickly realized that basketball involved quite a bit of running, so after one season of running up and down the court huffing and puffing, I told people that basketball “wasn’t my thing.”

As an adult, I settled in with softball as my best form of therapy, and I’m grateful for the lessons the game has taught me.  I wasn’t half-bad at it, and it was a great way to keep fit, work off the stresses of life, and since I wanted to be the best I could be at it I made the commitment to better myself at my sport.  I also figured out that I couldn’t excel at this sport without the balance of recognizing the one who gave me my talents.  That pride thing can get the best of me, so wisdom told me I needed to always be plugged in to that source to keep my head level. 

That meant that every time I stepped onto the field or up to the plate I whispered a prayer asking God to help me to play to the best of my ability, but more importantly to glorify Him on the field.  Somehow I got better at the game, and although I will always struggle with pride I was able to keep my head level and I formed some amazing relationships with gals who remain my friends to this day.  I’ve been able to talk about my faith and where I get my strength from on and off the field.  So as Chico Escuelo once said….”<softball> has been bery bery good to me!”

When I was in my twenties and playing short-stop on a competitive B level women’s softball team, I remember watching a gal who was 40 playing softball and I said to myself “wow…I hope I can continue playing softball until I’m 40″.  Forty seemed so far away.  I had both of my kids, and bounced back stronger and worked harder, and my team went to Nationals.

Then when I turned 40 there was no way I was ready to give it up, so I restated my goal as “if I’m able, I want to keep playing softball until I’m 50″.  My nickname during those years was Hoover – my C division coach said it was because I sucked every ball up that came near me.  Ha.  Again, 50 seemed so far away.

When I turned 50 and transitioned to third base and started playing coed ball, it seemed so absurd to me that I would give up such a huge part of my life…something that I was still good at – something that, granted…validated me.  Like I said, pride always seems to seep in, and truth be told…softball also made me feel like I could pretend I was still young.  I could dismiss the aches and pains I felt, and fool myself into believing that I was still a contender on the field in our D rec division.  I could keep up with the young gals (for the most part) and surprised myself at how I could still stay in the game.

Life is all about lessons.  And about finding grace in the lesson.  Flash forward to a few years ago and the first time a ball (hit by a dude) whizzed by my head before my body even reacted.  Uh oh.  Reality check.  Maybe its time I move to first base.  Sigh.  Aging can sometimes catch you off guard as you realize you have to say goodbye to things you use to do and it’s all a part of the fun and exciting things I’m learning to process as I age. And it’s a form of grief.

 

It’s always my desire to be as transparent with you as I can be so you know I’m just like you – flawed and fractured…bumbling through life, trying to stay plugged in to the source and trying to glorify the One who created me.  I use to try to come across to those around me as one who had it all together – a woman that loved and blessed her family with grace and joy and kindness.  One who never shared a cross word with her husband or children. Oh brother! I gave up on that  facade a long time ago, and it’s my desire now to live life out of a place that I call real Christianity.

Growing up, I watched my parents make occasional mistakes, but what stood out to me was that they rarely admitted those mistakes, or apologized when they should have.  Sort of the if we ignore the mistake it will just go away policy. So when I became a parent I prayed that I would be a mom who admitted her mistakes to her kids and apologized for them.  My desire was that I not only could model what that looked like so they knew how to do it themselves, but also so they understood that their mom wasn’t perfect…and needed forgiveness as much as they did.  Good concept, but BAD IDEA!

Praying a prayer like that is akin to praying for patience.  If you pray for patience, God’s not going to just zap you and bestow a supernatural ability to be patient upon you.  Not that He couldn’t do that, but that’s not typically how He works.  No…what God usually does is He increases the moments in your life that you get the opportunity to practice that gift you prayed for.  Imagine that!  So unless you really want more opportunities to practice patience…don’t pray for it!

So God has been gracious (way too gracious!) in answering my prayer by allowing me a plethora of opportunities to practice asking forgiveness of my kids.  There have been more moments than I would have liked where I had to apologize for something I did to hurt them, whether knowingly or unknowingly, and most often for words that came out of my mouth.  What was I thinking praying that prayer??

One such moment happened recently.  It involves two of my favorite loves, who also happen to be two of my most difficult relationships to maneuver through, but they are both SO worth it. Before I begin, let me just ask for your forgiveness, mercy and grace in advance, in case you thought I had it all together.

There’s more detail behind this tale than there is room for on this page, but our story starts in the kitchen where Salsa guy and I greet our 29 year old female child-unit (alias “daughter”) and are ready to head out the door to game night at friends.  Said child-unit is no different than most young adults her age who have a relationship with their phone and sometimes can’t get their nose out of it with texting, and tend to forget that there are actual human relationships standing right next to them.  So in a “Mom Moment” I casually suggest that she be mindful of the other adults we would be interacting with that evening, and maybe consider putting aside the phone for a portion of the evening.

What happened next was not pretty on anyone’s part, but the next day, as I shook my head in disbelief, there was also a giggle that slipped out and I thought to myself…”this would have been a perfect comedy sitcom script”.  I also knew that I would have to come clean with you all eventually, as I feel there is a connection with Christ and my transparency of this blog.

Child-unit chose to try to shame my suggestion with a dramatic “OH MY GOD…are you JOKING?”…which launched her male parental-unit into a fury in reaction to her disrespect, and with the swipe of his arm her purse somehow took flight across the room.  Keep in mind child-unit’s OCDness about germs and purses, which launched her into a rage and words flew back and forth around the room like a scene from The Birds and I felt the need to duck…but I quickly regrouped in time to step in the path of husband-unit heading towards child-unit to send her back to the world she came from.  I sent them to their specific corners… which translates into a daughter storming out the door home, and a husband sitting on the bedroom floor in utter frustration.

After delivering husband-unit a tongue lashing for his part in the escapade, I arrogantly returned to the kitchen to fix the situation, because I wasn’t the one who had screwed up.  That arrogant thing gets me in to trouble every time.  I picked up the phone to call child-unit, and of course, there’s no way she’s going to answer, so I begin to try to share some of my free maternal wisdom over the phone with her on her voice mail.

About this time husband-unit returns to the room and is, shall we say, more inspired to encorage me to say specific things to our child-unit.  Try to picture this now – I begin this back and forth conversation with two people – like a verbal tennis volley between me politely asking the hub (NOT) to stop talking and sharing his thoughts in one ear, and between me sharing my wisdom into the phone with my adult child.  As the heat intensifies, and the back and forth gets louder and louder, first to my husband, then in to the phone to my daughter, then back to my husband, I feel myself begin to lose (a) any recognition of who I am actually talking to with each volley, and (b) any control of my emotions, and (c) my mind completely!

At that moment, it felt like I was observing another person from afar, who has lost all control and is yelling at her husband using a phrase that I don’t recognize that sounded like GOD !$@&?# (I didn’t even know I knew that phrase!) and then shouting the same phrase into the phone towards my first-born and I’m thinking “who IS that woman?”  Back and forth, the same profanity, over and over, louder and louder,…at least two specific times toward each of them.

Now press pause.  Can you see this in your mind?  A crazy woman shouting profanities at her husband and then at her daughter into the phone.  I suppose it was my feeble effort to call down condemnation on the situation; a situation filled with stubbornness, a lack of self-control, and selfishness on all our parts, but here comes the big finish.  I make my final dismount with the exclamation to both my cherished loved ones…”YOU’RE BOTH [posterior body part] s!” …and BAM, I slam the phone down.

And then suddenly, the dove’s whisper into my heart penetrates like an arrow…oh my gosh…I am that woman who BLOGS ABOUT GRACE!  Sigh. Doesn’t God just have the funniest sense of humor?

I don’t mean to make light of my sin.  Sin is sin, and I’m the biggest sinner of them all…but that’s exactly why God sent his son – to die for those sins and he’s crazy about me even still.  So I’m guessing he was sitting and watching this scene play out, dropping his head into his hands and shaking his head saying “really Kris?”…and then getting a smile on his face because he knew that from the ugliness of the moment there would spring redemption.

The redemption came three weeks later (because that’s how long it took our daughter to decide to speak to us again) and we called a family meeting.  Apologies were made, conversation was shared, each of us were heard, feelings were talked about, forgiveness was given, and we all came out the other side stronger in relationship, healed and in a better place than when we went in.  I just love it when God can make lemonade out of lemons.  When He can make fun out of dysfunction.  When He uses your mistakes to make something better…now that’s what I call grace.

And God works ALL things together for good to those who believe.  ~ Romans 3:23

So if your family is anything like mine and you don’t hide behind a mask, then take those dysfunctional moments, have conversation, take your walls down, learn from your mistakes, ask for and give forgiveness, take a different path next time, and even giggle at the obsurdity of it all…and then move on.  Better for the conflict.  Better for the fight.  Better for the healing.  This is real life.  This is real Christianity.  This is grace.

I’m finding myself doing things these days that I remember my mom doing a long time ago.  Like peering closely at my face in the mirror…. and pulling the sides of my cheeks up to envision what my face looked like without wrinkles.  Yikes.  Am I becoming my mother?

The human body is such a beautifully designed piece of art and wonderful craftsmanship.  Mine is a bit more on the abstract side, but that’s OK with me.  I’m pretty content in my own skin and happy with what God has given me.  Don’t get me wrong – if I had my druthers I’d prefer to redistribute here and there, with maybe a little less hubbla hubbla.  And can I just say I don’t remember these love handles – didn’t that skin use to be up under my arm pits?  Dang that Isaac Newton and his gravity theory – I see the effects of aging weighing this body down more and more each day.

Even the most fit athlete has to eventually accept that their body is broken and weakening.  Geez Kris…I thought this blog was meant to be uplifting!  My point is that in the House of Grace, I’m learning not to be anxious about the weakness of my body as I age, but I’m learning to accept it as a preview and prelude to the most amazing transformation of all time.  When I get out of bed and feel like the Tin Man – creaky and rusty – I’m reminded that we’re loaned these bods for just a season, and if you believe what’s been promised then our new and improved versions are awaiting us in another time and another place.

We humans so often feel like we can’t measure up to a physical standard we created, so we are convinced that it’s how God looks at us too.  But it’s not.  And then we live our lives through a lens of shame and guilt, and the comparing and faking that it produces carries over into almost every area of our lives.  Our marriages, our churches, our friendships, our families.

In my latest book crush, The Cure, the authors talk about the beautiful transformation of a butterfly.  Isn’t it amazing that a caterpillar has the exact same DNA before it goes into it’s cocoon as it does after it’s transformed into a beautiful butterfly?  That means it’s essentially the same being on the inside before and after it’s transformation, even though it looks completely different.  If you apply the same concept to humans, that means that although I may be a little beaten up on the outside, I still feel like the person I was in my 20’s.  The cool part of the equation is that we were created to be transformed people in another time and place.  Whether we allow that inner transformation to start here on earth, or have to wait until eternity…some of that might be up to you.

God tells us that there are mansions that await us in Heaven, and I use to think it meant really hoity-toity houses.  Nowadays I think it means wonderful and improved bodies – butterfly bodies….void of the effects of sickness and aging.  Now I’d love a beautiful log cabin by the waters of Lake Tahoe as my mansion…but I’m thinking I would be pretty pleased with a new and improved version of me, both inside and out.  Dang, with my luck, I’ll be skinny once I get there and chubby will be the new rage.

If I get to choose what features I’d like in my new home, here’s just a few things I’d like to order:

• dimples
• a beautiful singing voice (even though I think God hears my voice that way now)
• I’d like to sing back-up for Patti LaBelle
• I’d like to play drums…or maybe banjo
• long skinny fingers
• less athletic calves and knees

I have a theory – Matthew 20:16 says “….the last will be first, and the first last”….and I’m taking this completely out of context, but I jokingly like to extend that and say that in heaven the skinny will be fat, and the fat will be skinny.  And the people who can’t carry a tune will be the rock stars in heaven.  And those who can’t ……well, just fill in the blank and you’ll have transformations going on all over the place.  But for now – for today, I’m content that I can throw a softball like a dude, and I can love people like crazy, and that I’m blond, and that I can organize the biggest and best event you can throw at me, and that I can make a difference in the lives of my family and friends .

Today is my birthday and I’m actually glad to be at this place and space in time that I’m at today on the aging timeline.  Although there’s more time behind me than there is ahead of me, I can look back with wisdom (and sometimes mortification) and be so grateful for how I’ve grown and changed – and hopefully matured – not only in my faith but in grace.  As I age, my body may be deteriorating but inside I’m growing stronger in “aliveness” and grace.

So how do you see yourself as you age?  One step away from a slipped disk?  Defeated and holding on to everything you have?  Or do you see yourself as a caterpillar, being transformed into a beautiful butterfly?  That’s the mystery of grace.

It’s Mothers Day and I’m thinking about my mom.  She’s been gone seven years now and I think of her every day. Moms play such an important role in our lives, but yet there’s no prerequisite for it – no class you have to take, and no test you have to pass to be a mom.  There’s not even a learner’s permit, for cryin’ out loud! You don’t have to fill out an application; they’ll let any woman with ovaries or cash in their pocket take a baby home.  They don’t give you a job description or a Mom Manual that outlines what to do when your 2 year old is sitting in their car seat, shoving their tiny fist down their throat so they’ll gag and throw up because they’ve figured out that by doing so, they’ll get your attention.  Man those little child-units can be smart little suckers, and yes, that happened to me.  It’s a a thankless job that’s not for the faint-of-heart.

Some moms are naturals at it.  Others are ill equipped to handle the job.  Most of us just bumble our way through motherhood, trying to make a difference in our kids lives that will help them survive in life without too many scars so that they can take care of us when we’re old.   And I would venture to say that all moms try to take what they’ve learned from their own moms – both the good and the bad – and wrap it all up with our own new great parenting ideas and traditions to produce a better and greater version of ourselves.  But if you’re anything like me you’ll realize that there is so much more to raising kids.   My greatest desire is that I helped my kids find the best way they can glorify the one who created them, and in the exchange I’ve found that being a mom is one of the most fulfilling roles I’ve had in life.

I always wanted to be a cool mom, so sometimes when I had to either be the bad guy or impart some profound wisdom on my kids I prefaced it with the words…”this is going to be a mom moment”.  It was my way of giving them advance notice that what they were about to hear was going to change their life…or possibly be a little uncomfortable….depending on whether it was advice on relationships, telling them why they couldn’t get a motorcycle, or the sex talk.  And in terms of equipping my kids, we chose to raise our kids in a faith that would sustain them through life’s ups and downs knowing that they didn’t walk this wacky life alone, and that there is one who walks beside them.

My mom is probably the person who made the biggest impact on my life.  I was such a people-pleaser growing up, and there was no one that I wanted to please more than my mom.   She was graceful and carried herself in such a way that made this clutsy tom-boy envious.  She was the one who introduced me to my faith simply by watching her.  Did she get it right all the time – Heavens no!  But even at a young age I understood that what she chose to pattern her life after was a process – a journey – and that in life you don’t always get it right all the time.  That’s where mercy and grace show up.  But what she thought mattered to me, so even as an adult making new decisions, I would filter those decisions through the colander of  “what would mom think”?

I had no sisters, and so I loved having relationship with her.  She became one of my favorite people to spend time with (except for maybe during her menopausal years) and she was a friend.  Was she perfect?  Not by a long shot, but as with any relationship that’s worth fighting for, it takes hard work and patience.  And lots of E.G.R (extra grace required).

There are a lot of things I would say to her if she were here.  I would ask for her forgiveness for the many things that I was silently critical and judged her for how she handled something…until now that I’ve walked in her shoes.  I would wrap my arms around her and lay my head on her shoulder and sigh…and let her know that I’m sorry I had the audacity to tell her that it was her fault that I was overweight because she fed me Homogenized milk, instead of Low Fat.  I would tell her I know why she was a little cray-cray during my high school years (it was the hormones, mom!) and I wished I had understood that there was E.G.R.  And I would sit at her feet and tell her how sorry I was that when I came home from college on weekends I chose to spend more time seeing old friends than I did just being at home with them.  And I would tell her “I get it now”….now that I’m an empty-nester and miss my kids like crazy.

I’m sure I hurt her with my thoughtless words and actions time and time again, and yet, that’s what mothers do sometimes.  We take it, and we choose to file those thoughtless moments in a file somewhere where, if we’re smart, we choose not to pull them out and use later. There’s a great mystery of grace there.  A true mom moment!  I suspect that my mom recognized in those moments that I was young and foolish, and gave me grace because she understood that one day I would walk this same path – and that when I did,  I would get it.  I would understand the pain of being blamed for someone’s own selfish choices.  Or the hurt of being second best…of being misunderstood.  That I would feel the sting of what it feels like to not be  needed anymore.

I’m at that place – that crossroad where I can glance backwards and recognize the grace that was offered me, and in looking forward I have grace opportunities where I can make the choice to be quiet, knowing that there are those with more time ahead of them who will have light bulb moments when they’ll whisper “Oh….I get it now.  I see what you did there Mom – you chose grace over condemnation.”  If I did my job well, maybe that moment will come for them sooner than it did for me.

So on this Mother’s Day I’m thinking about and honor my sweet mom, Ruth.  She taught me so much and who I am today was molded and shaped by her touch on my life.  She was a keeper.  I miss you, Mom, and it was my joy and honor to be your daughter.  Thanks for the grace you offered me while you walked this earth.  I am so grateful..and so I offer you grace back.  What a great mom moment, indeed!

I recently traveled to Orlando for a conference where I spent a week with some of the loveliest people.  On my way, I stopped at the airport store and bought a novel to read on the plane.  I was supposed to be reading a spiritual book on being a good listener, but now and then a girl needs a good Nicolas Sparks book to pass the time on a long plane ride.  LOL.

The book was about a cowboy who almost dies bull riding, and because of his injuries (and the metal plate that holds his head together) he is told he should never ride again or he will surely die.  Then he meets “the girl”, but is still faced with the conundrum (can I just say that I love big words like “conundrum”?) of choosing between going against doctors orders and riding again so that he can pay off the huge medical bills and thus save the farm that had been mortgaged to pay those medical bills.  But if he does that then the girl of his dreams will leave him because she can’t watch him kill himself.  The alternative is to give it all up and sell the farm to be with the one he loves? OMG!….what’s a cowboy to do?

So this thread of having to sell the farm in order to get what you need the most came back to me today.  This morning I was reading (again!) portions of one of my favorite books, The Inner Voice of Love by Henri Nouwen; the chapter entitled For Now, Hide Your Treasure, and it reminded me of that story line.

Here are some excerpts from that chapter:

“You have found a treasure; the treasure of God’s love.  You know now where it is, but you are not yet ready to own it fully.  So many attachments keep pulling you away.  If you would fully own your treasure, you must hide it in the field where you found it, go off happily to sell everything you own, and then come back and buy the field.”

“Only when you have let go of everything else can the treasure be completely yours.  Having found the treasure puts you on a new quest for it.  The spiritual life is a long and often arduous search for what you already found.”

“Because finding the treasure is only the beginning of the search, you have to be careful.  If you expose the treasure to others without fully owning it, you might harm yourself and even lose the treasure. That is why you must hide the treasure and spend your energy in selling your property so that you can buy the field where you have hidden it.”

“This is often a painful enterprise, because your sense of who you are is so intimately connected to all the things you own: success, friends, prestige, money, degrees, and so on.  But you know that nothing but the treasure itself can truly satisfy you.  Finding the treasure without being ready yet to fully own it will make you restless.  This is the restlessness of the search for God.  It is the way to holiness.  It is the road to the kingdom.  It is the journey to the place where you can rest.”

What do you suppose all that means?  And what represents the farm in your life? What represents the field?  I’d love to hear your input.  For me, the “letting go” and “selling everything I own” is this process I’m in of giving up my rights; my right to be prideful, my right to be No. 1, my right to a full bank account, my right to being treated fairly, my right to have granite counter tops, my right to see my kids more often, my right to have lots of friends, my right to a nice lawn, my right to a secure retirement, the right to blah, blah, blah.  Fill in the blanks.  But the treasure I’m finding in the exchange is worth far more than any of those things.

For you it might be the right to a happy marriage, the right to drive a nice car, the right to not have cancer, the right to have a husband or wife, the right to have children, the right not be lonely, the right to die in your sleep, the right to a good job, the right to have just one more day with the one you love.  Those are all treasures that we seek in this life, and I don’t blame you for wanting them.  But the truth of the matter is…we’re not promised any of that – just a God that will walk alongside us and hold us when we weep.  Dang!  I wanted the promise of an unscathed life.

So, I won’t tell you the ending of the Nicolas Sparks book.  It’s coming out as a movie later this year, but it’s one of those stories where there are two scenarios and story lines going on at one time, and for the life of you, you can’t figure out how they are inter-connected.  But they are.  Just like how we’re all inter-connected, bouncing off one another, touching other people’s lives, weaving back around and learning how to sell the farm for the promise of a better treasure that awaits.

I think learning the truth about grace just might be part of the treasure.

If you didn’t know me well and you glanced down at my left inner forearm, you might suspect that I was a cutter, or at some point in my early life I had tried to “end it all”. You see, I have two or three nasty looking scars on my inner forearm near my wrist that stand out and shout to the average onlooker “this chick has issues!”

That’s actually true – except my issues aren’t with people – they’re with heating elements. Like curling irons and clothing irons. Such things are tools of the devil and if I weren’t so vain I’d have heaved them into the trash long ago. I have a love / hate relationship with my curling iron. You see, I’m one of those gals blessed with curly (a.k.a. frizzy) hair that has a mind of its own and fancies kinks over gentle, pretty curls. So you can imagine my joy (“Praise Jesus“) when they invented the flat iron.

I so wanted straight hair when I was growing up – like all the cool “pretty” girls. In fact, before my freshman high school picture I sat under the ironing board, laid my hair up on the board and reached up and tried to iron all the kinks out of my hair. Can you just picture it? I bet there were a few of you out there that did the same.

Growing up, I bought all the latest anti-frizz products and cursed God secretly for this gift of frizz, so when I learned I could burn the frizz into submission I was ecstatic. The problem is that somehow, other body parts usually have a way of coming into contact with said heating element.

For instance, on the way out the door to my 25th high school reunion where I couldn’t wait to show off my stylin’ smooth hair, I noticed that a corner of the lace yoke on my dress (does that scream 90’s, or what?) was wrinkled…and why not just use my curling iron to help it lay flat?  I went to my 25th reunion stylin’ a curling iron burn mark smack-dab in the middle of my chest.

It’s the same with my regular iron.  I’m constantly hitting my arm on the top of the dad-blame iron.  My mother always told me I should have a “day” that I do all my ironing…along with a day to grocery shop, a day to clean the house, and a day to do the laundry.  Ain’t happenin’ Mom!  I do all the above when I have a moment to spare, so when it comes to ironing my clothes I do that in the morning when I’ve decided what to wear, on the small tabletop ironing board that I hide behind the bedside table.  I cleverly hide the iron behind my 8″x10″ picture on my husband’s nightstand on his side of the bed, so no one can see it when they walk in. Get the picture?

The first few times I tried this I turned the iron off when I was finished and placed it back behind my picture and then folded up the ironing board, slid it back behind the bedside table and my picture where the still-hot iron was lurking, letting my arm come down onto the edge of it and Yowza!  Derned if I didn’t burn my inside wrist like a son-of-a-gun.  Ouch!

Most people would learn after the first time and take steps to change the scenerio the next time. Maybe put the ironing board back before the iron?  Ya think?  Learning from my mistakes isn’t something I excelled at when I was younger.  Or now that I’m older.  If you know anything about me you’ll know that this is the sort of thing that God deals with me on a regular basis.  “Ummm…excuse me Kris…it’s probably not a good idea for you to hold all that judgment inside towards that person you’re jealous of“.  What?  Me….jealous?  Humph!  And then that jealousy comes back around to bite me in the postier time and time again.  So you would think I would say to myself…. “self…. maybe you should fold up the ironing board first and THEN place the iron behind your smiling face so you don’t burn yourself again.” No.  That would be too simple.  Here is what it took to finally get my attention to make change: Ugly scars, huh?  There’s shame involved in that.  Doing the same thing….over and over again…leaving scars that you end up blaming on someone else rather than owning them and chancing changing your behavior so it doesn’t happen again?  What if I get hurt?  What if I fail?  Sometimes it takes getting burned enough times with scars to show for it before finally making change.  Why is that?

It’s the same with my walk with God.  Why did it take me so long to come to a place where I wanted to change and grow in Christ?  Probably because I didn’t need Him earlier.  I took center stage, so why would I invite someone to share that stage with me?  Why take the chance of letting someone else upstage me? I’m learning that God’s grace is bigger than scars.

It starts with owning my “stuff”.  Recognizing the need I have to be a different person.  A different ironer.  But also recognizing that nothing I can do on my own is going to facilitate a change within me.  The change has already been made – I just need to learn to trust the one bigger and wiser than me who already did the work.  But there is a way home and it starts with listening better to who God says I am and then trusting One bigger than me to do the work.

My latest book crush is a book called The Cure  (John Lynch, Bruce McNicol, and Bill Thrall) that asks the question “What if God isn’t who you think He is and neither are you?”  God’s cure for changing course (or doing your ironing differently) rarely comes in the form we expect. The authors of this book contend that ” If we see God through a veil of shame, we’ll think the goal is to “fix” the behavior.  Shame wants us constantly trying to prove we’re not as bad as we imagine.  In the Room of Grace, however we’re learning to believe we are no longer identified by shame.  Our God doesn’t see us that way, and he doesn’t need us to see ourselves that way.  We’re free to trust His delight and love even in the midst of our erratic, maturing behaviors.  He wants us to learn dependence on Him instead of performance.  We’re learning to trust His power in us.  The beauty is, we actually fail less in doing so.”

So here we are….daring to want to do things differently….daring to change your course, but realizing that the goal never was about changing me.  It’s to grow up and get better at doing things differently….because I’m already changed!  Christ changed me way back when He hung on a tree and I chose to accept that gift. Trusting that what was already done on my behalf allows me to trust the One who did it without the messy condemnation or shame.  And so I start to make better choices about how I store my iron.  Now that’s grace at it’s best.

These are the lessons I’ve learned from ironing, and burns and scars.  Burning grace.

I don’t know what it is, but I’m feeling more full this year than I was last year.  No, I’m not referring to that “my pants are too tight after the holidays” fullness that we all feel when we’ve had way too many pieces of pie or popped one too many Lindt Chocolates into your mouth on New Years.  You know what that feels like – that awful feeling when you have to loosen your belt a smidge to keep from exploding and flying about the room like a wild balloon.

No, I’m talking more about an inner emotional feeling of contentment.  I feel like I am more successful as of late at trading all the shiny little things in this life that keep my attention for the more valuable things right before me that I so easily ignore.  Days when I’m less consumed with myself and actively looking or creative ways to build others up and serve others.  Now there’s a life lesson…..when a self-centered, prideful heart learns that she’d rather add value to those around her, mostly because it keeps her eyes off of herself…that’s a win-win and deserves a “yay God”!

John Fischer asks, “Can you imagine what it would look like if everyone found our fullness from being in relationship with the one who created them?  Not needing anything emotionally from those around us because we were so full of Him? Imagine if our peace and contentment and security was fed by the time we spent with Christ so that we weren’t needy, and only looking to add value to others around us.  If we were working out of His fullness – now THAT would be revolutionary!”

If that were possible, understandably there would still be times when we would fail…because we’re flawed people, but His grace would be enough for us.  No beating ourselves up with guilt, knowing that we are accepted by Him and since He is enough, therefore we are complete! When we’re FULL we’re free because we’re not working from a sense of deficiency.  We’re not looking for emotional deposits into our love tank…we’re the ones handing them out!  We’re not looking for handouts…we’re handing out confidence and grace to those around us like parade candy!

Imagine how much drama might be sucked out of the social and relational settings in our lives if we just accepted HIS fullness and let it invade our lives?  I was raised around drama, so that’s a lesson that took me many years to learn. So the question I continually ask myself is “do I have a sense of contentedness that doesn’t even compare to who I am, how I’m equipped, or my set of talents?”  That’s my daily desire – to live out of his completeness, and serve out of HIS completeness.  Knowing that I am accepted by Him and He is enough…so therefore I am complete.  Amen and pass the Reeses Peanut Butter Cups!

So I fumble through this life trying to do the best I can.   I’m on my knees a lot, asking forgiveness for the times that I don’t bring Him glory.  Asking Him to forgive me for the times when my pride, entitlement, arrogance and selfishness shadow His glory. But I also know that My Father wired me a specific way and that my tendency to keep my eyes on myself is part of my fallen makeup, and so my daily struggles are part of my journey to teach me valuable lessons.  That’s the “power in weakness” thing, and so these lessons are all a part of my heart change and transformation.  Filling me up.  Making me more full.

This might be the only time I don’t mind loosening up my heart belt.