Receiving Grace

Tonight, I yelled at "The Princess," one of the girls I watch.

I've yelled at the Princess lots of times.  Most of the time she had it coming. She probably deserved it tonight, too. She wasn't listening. But I still felt bad for yelling at her.

I try to be gracious. Then I fail. And I find myself being the one who has to accept grace.

The Princess has some pride issues. She HATES to be wrong (don't we all). And if she's wrong, and she's wrong a lot...because she's a kid...and a human being, too boot--well, if she's wrong and you catch her being wrong, well, she doesn't forgive that easily.

However, I find her to be very forgiving when other people are wrong. For example, when I apologized for yelling at her, she shrugged and said it was okay. When I asked if I had scarred her for life, she grinned and told me I'm weird. In her vocabulary, "You're weird, Ruth" is synonymous with "I love you, Ruth." At least I hope so, because she says it all the time.

The Princess and I are a lot alike. I see a lot of who I was (and still can be) in her. It's easy to forgive sometimes. It's not so easy to ask for forgiveness.

When we forgive, we get to be the bigger person. We get to be the hero. That's a good feeling.

When we ask for forgiveness, we have to humble ourselves. We have to admit a we are at fault. We have to admit that we aren't these perfect people who always have it together. We have to put ourselves at the other end of grace, hoping the other person will give it, because we need it in order for the relationship to continue and grow.

That's not fun.  But I would venture to say that graciously accepting grace is just as (if not more) important as freely giving grace.

After all, as fallen, sinful humans, we aren't fully able to forgive others until we're able to humble ourselves and accept the grace of God.  We can't begin to comprehend the power of grace until we realize (on some level) just how much grace God gives us.

And when we mess up, as I did tonight with the Princess, we have an opportunity. I could have just brushed off the whole encounter with the Princess. She gets yelled at so much that she can brush it off quickly. But I took the time to pull her aside (after we had both calmed down) and model humility. That doesn't mean she's going to develop her own sense of humility overnight, but children need to understand that it's okay to mess up. They need to see that there's a proper response for those times when we mess up.

Guilt is human, meaningless, and leads to self pity and inaction. Conviction is from God, meaningful, and leads to humility and change.

We need to learn to accept grace and even seek it out--even when it's scary and could lead to rejection. And we need to give grace to others, for we have likewise been forgiven.

We are all undeserving princesses and princess. We aren't perfect, but we should strive to honorably represent our Father in all and say and do.

...Even when we fail.

Tasty Excuses

I once said that I would never be able to fit in any clothes smaller than a size ten because of my extra-large birthing hips.  I now must face the reality that half my readers have probably stopped reading because I used the phrase "birthing hips" in the first sentence of this post.  If you're still reading, then I am happy to report that I am now a size six in pants and a size four in dresses. 

I once said that I would never be a runner.  I'm still not anything amazing, but I've come a long way from the girl who used to get completely wiped out after running just half a mile.  I am hoping to do a 10K in the fall, and then I might look into doing a half marathon in the spring.  We'll see what happens...

Anyway, I've been eating a lot of my words lately, and well, they actually taste pretty good.  The trouble is, the excuses I made that kept me from attempting the things I've accomplished lately also tasted pretty good when I was saying them.  "I'll never be truly skinny, so I guess it's okay to just keep eating whatever I want whenever I want."  "I'll never really be thin, so I'll just exercise occasionally.  And if my body feels like running, I'll just stick with walking anyway, because I can't keep up the running very long."  "I've got too much going on in my life to make time for exercise."  "It's too expensive to eat healthy foods when a box of mac and cheese is so cheap and will last me two or three meals." 

These things tasted really good while I was saying them.  They gave me all the reasons I needed to keep being fat, to keep being lazy, to keep being unhealthy.  And maybe some of them were true for a while.  I remember the first time I tried to start the diet and exercise routine in February of 2009, my grandmother died, and I wasn't able to deal with grief and all the other stuff in my life.  Diet and exercise was too much to add to all that was going on at that particular moment in my life.  That set me back a year...but it didn't set me back forever.

So I guess sometimes there are valid excuses, but I don't think they can be allowed to sustain you for very long.  Excuses are like food that's bad for you.  They taste good, but they aren't good for you.  They make you fat and comfortable while not really nourishing you.  And over the past year and a half, I've had to exchange all the tasty dessert words for other words.  Instead of saying, "Oh, there's no reason for me to do this because I'll never succeed," I've had to say, "I'm going to give this a try and see what happens."  Those words aren't as comfortable.  They aren't ice cream words.  They are carrot stick words.  Carrot sticks still taste good (to me anyway), but they aren't as comfortable and easy as a bowl of ice cream. 

But carrot sticks are good for you.  And doing something uncomfortable is good for you.  And it's easy to get proud of myself for accomplishing this amazing feat of losing 50+ pounds (60 is right around the corner!), especially when I discovered yesterday that I can totally rock a super cute size four dress.  But the truth is, there are a lot of areas in my life where I'm still eating too much ice cream. 

The prayer and Bible reading has gotten way off track lately.  It's easy and comfortable to sit under the banquet table God's prepared and wait for Him to throw scraps of grace to me, but He's invited me to sit at the table and dine with Him--if only I wouldn't be too lazy to get up off the floor. 

The writing.  Oh, yes, the writing.  It's like I've taken some kind of extended vacation from that.  Have I been busy?  Yes.  Last week was not an excuse--it was a reality.  I had other things to do besides writing, and they were vitally important.  But right now?  I'm housesitting.  I'm in a big house with a cat and it's really quiet.  It's like a retreat where I have time and space to write (when I don't have to go to work--sigh).  Am I writing?  No.  I'm watching cable tv and living it up.  It's easy to help myself to that big bowl of ice cream excuse that says, "I don't have cable at my apartment.  I don't usually watch tv like this.  When am I going to have another opportunity to watch such exciting and important programming as 'I Kid with Brad Garret'?"  Yeah.  The ice cream is tasty and comfortable, but not at all nourishing.  And I need some carrot sticks in my writing life for sure.  Maybe even a salmon filet.

This isn't to say that ice cream is necessarily bad.  I've lost weight and I still have something frivolous to eat almost every day (life without chocolate is almost not worth living).  Sometimes we need to excuse ourselves from work, from drama, from the daily grind of life.  It's just that we need to keep those excuses in balance--and I've said it before and will say it again--I'm horrible at balancing.  We can't live off ice cream and cake.  Those things have to be integrated meagerly into a steady diet of protein and vegetables and real solid food. 

I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm hoping to eat some of my words again.  All I can do is keep giving life a good try.  There will be failures and false starts, but as long as I keep choosing to risk instead of choosing what's safe and comfortable, I don't think I can truly be called a failure.

But no matter what else happens, I can still totally rock that super cute size four dress.

Gumption

Have you ever written a blog and then deleted the whole thing?

I just did that.

I'm very frustrated with myself right now. The blog I just deleted was basically about a page of me berating myself. The problem with it was not that what I said wasn't true, but really, who wants to read a page of me berating myself?

I'm frustrated because I haven't had a lot of time to write recently (I worked 2 extra nights this week because people at work are sick, and I had to fill in), but I haven't made good use of the time I have.

I haven't been writing. I haven't been editing. I haven't been actively seeking publication. Basically, I'm not a very good writer right now. I have a goal of sending at least five queries a month to literary agents (until I find one), and yet January is almost over and I haven't even sent one little query. It's easy to blame the lack of time, but I know that's not a good excuse. There's a reason I'm dragging my feet, and believe me, I have every right to be frustrated with myself.

I have no gumption. I've never had any gumption. I have talent. I have ability. I have resources. God only knows how many opportunities I've missed. And it's all because I don't have any gumption. Suddenly, that's just not good enough anymore.

The truth is, I'm just as afraid of success as I am of failure. In fact, I might be more comfortable with failure. I'm used to it. It takes far more courage to succeed than it does to fail...at least for me. When you fail, there's disappointment and maybe a little embarrassment, but no one expects anything of you. And the more you fail, the less people expect. You become pathetic, but you're safe. It's when you succeed that suddenly you have more responsibility. You have more people expecting more from you. And then there's that little idea of the unknown that causes me to stare sleepless at the ceiling some nights. I don't know how to be a successful writer...and the thought of becoming one actually scares me....

Ugh. It's not good enough. God's given me too much and shown He's too faithful for me to act (or not act) this way. I'm frustrated with myself, and I really hope this leads to some action.

I'm not sure if this is a good prayer or not, but pray I get some gumption. After all, the rest of this has come from the Lord's hand, too. My only boast is in Him.

I hope I don't update this blog again until I've sent out some good queries. I hope it's not too long.