I've been feeling particularly joyous today, if not overly bubbly... I've been reading C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves (it's amazing, even if he and I butt heads on a couple of things), and I started the chapter on Charity (his chapter on God's Grace being the ultimate love), and have felt increasingly aware of this joy and relief that I think came with a clearer understanding that I don't have to feel close to God for Him to be close to me, for His grace to cover me. I feel more relaxed, generally less concerned about being enough of the right thing, more able to trust that He means what He says when He says He loves me and He's got me.
It's honestly such a maddening thing to worry about, the being enough, because the more I think about it, the more critical I am of my performance, the more I see that there is an aggressive amount of stuff wrong with me; and not just with me, but in me. I am inherently jacked up, whether the clinical roots of the problems are in my childhood or high school or my own choices
-- and regardless of the source, it's still my mess, and, yes, injustices have been committed against me, things have been said and done that I am not responsible for, that should not have been said and done, but I am starting to understand that whether I asked for it or not, the bags my family and friends and I have packed for me are mine now. I can leave them unclaimed and spend all my time hating and resenting the people who packed them, or I can pick them up, open them up, and start sorting them out. I'm still avoiding a lot of them, but I'm seeing more and more that that's not a sustainable approach --
and no amount of overthinking can change that or fix that or work around to some kind of solution, even if I convince myself that this time I can pull it off. That's been what I've been a little stuck on lately, trying to be just right. But, today, I was reading after breakfast and started to feel more and more relieved: I have literally no idea what's going to happen anytime soon, I'm sure my heart will have been broken by a dozen things by this time next week, I'm sure I'll inadvertently or very intentionally hurt my friends and family, I'm sure I won't live up to my own expectations, much less my Lord's commands, and I'm sure there's nothing I can do about the inevitability of all of it, but I'm also sure that my Lord knows that. He expects more failures and screw-ups from me than I could ever expect from myself, and He has decided to love me through it.
I am lovely because He loves me. I love Him because He loved me first- I didn't hold it over His head, I didn't say, "I'll love You, but first, You need to love me," I didn't force His hand somehow, He chose to love me when I was vile.
I feel like I'm dancing on the edge of some concepts and theology that I'm not academically qualified to talk about, so I'll end with this: I am completely responsible for my actions and at the same time I could never act in the way God tells me to; knowing this, God, loving, just, and true, has extended His inexhaustible grace to me. Because of that I can relax, and this pretty undercurrent of joy I'm hearing in my heart can carry on.
No comments:
Post a Comment