Growing with Grace Part 2

I write these posts because as I grow in life experience the more I am impressed that we all have a lot more in common than we have differences. Each time I am inspired to write it is couched in the idea of what I wish I could have read for myself. There are so many biblical truths outlined in the Bible which are good to learn and study but we have a much easier time translating principles into application when we see those principles work through someone's life. As a naturally intellectual person I am drawn to Paul's dense theology but only once I have heard how those principles have affected someone else do they begin to move from my head into my heart. I think that's why Jesus spent a lot of time teaching through stories. 

What I would like to share is the ways I have misunderstood who God is and the many ways he has shown me grace and taught me about himself over my life. My goal is to write the things that could have helped me at a younger age so that maybe, by God's grace, someone else can learn from my mistakes and live a fuller, stronger, more confident life. Specifically, confidence in your relationship with God. Just in case someone jumps in thinking this is going to be a bunch of feel good stories and fluffy theology: believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be debt free, happily married with 2.5 kids, and have a house in the 'burbs. Sorry, I don't have many of those. Most of the time they are traumatic and the spiritual lessons learned from them required a whole lot of separation by time and professional therapy.

And where better to start than at the beginning?

I was raised in a suburban home with as much love as possible by people who are human and broken. Thankfully, I was taught about the grace of God from a young age. My mom was a new Christian when I showed up stage right and she consistently brought me, my two sisters, and two brothers to church. We were a blended family, one sister and brother from my dad's first marriage and the three "younger" siblings from my parents. My father was a well respected auto mechanic and functional alcoholic with blackout anger issues and my oldest brother, Bobby, was already addicted to drugs, smoking, and alcohol years before I was born. My older sister, Kimberlie, came to live with us when I was three years old (or so? Someone correct me if I'm wrong?) because her mom had to serve jail time for drug possession with intent to distribute. Bobby mostly stayed with his stepfather but would bounce between that house, our house, and rehab. Kimberlie stayed with us until leaving for college. I remember being so confused and sad when she left for the big city but was just too young at the time to understand the process of growing up and flying the coop.

But my earliest memories are the nightmares. Some nightmares are a result of trauma, some don't have an explanation. Mine were the latter. They were intense, repetitive, and always a struggle between life and death. I would wake up in the middle of the night and cry for mommy and she would always come to comfort me. Until she didn't. 

No one remembers exactly how old I was, perhaps three, on that fateful night, but I distinctly remember that I had the "lost" dream again. The one where mom brought me to a business function and we sat in a small auditorium and listened to someone speak. Of course, I dreamed about playing while the adults droned on about adult stuff. Afterward we left the second floor of the venue via elevators. In the crush of people mom and I got separated. She went in the elevator but I couldn't get there in time before it closed. I was scared but knew I could ride the next one and catch up to her. I couldn't find her in the first floor lobby. I couldn't find her outside the building. I went back up to the empty auditorium then back down to the lobby. She was gone. Forever. She left without me and never came looking. At that point the dream would always fast forward and I would see myself as several years older, around 7, a lonely street urchin dressed in rags and dumpster diving for food. Then I would either wake up or it would start again from the beginning. 

Like usual I woke and cried for my mommy to come find me. I was lost and would never see her again. But she didn't come. I cried myself back to sleep and the dream repeated. I remember asking my mom in the morning why she didn't come when I called her and she said something to the effect of "I was really tired and it's time you become a big girl." (As an adult and a parent I realize it is unlikely she worded it this way but this is the impression I got at three years old and my mother has no memory of this exchange to refute it.) 

In my three year old mind what that meant to me was "I won't come find you in real life either because I'm too tired." I was not loved, cared for, cherished, valued. I'm still carrying around these scars despite forgiving my mother for inadvertently hurting me so deeply. It is still painful even to write about these memories 30 years later. So when God refers to himself as "father" or a "mother hen," my first feeling is not positive. I think it is true for everyone that your growing up experience greatly influences how you view God and authority figures. God calls himself a "good father" but so does my seriously flawed father. So what does a good father mean? I've had to learn that over time through a series of events that my heavenly father will in fact neither leave me nor forsake me. God knows just how sinful I am yet continues to love me. I have often rejected Him yet he continues to pursue me. All things my early father has failed to do.

I have wanted to die. God said "I am here with you."

I have cursed his name. He said "what else are you keeping hidden inside?"

I have committed the same sins over and over and over again. Still he says "I died so you could be clean." 

According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary grace is defined as "unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification." The Sunday School answer I learned was "the unmerited favor of God."

So by definition the only one capable of grace is God himself. So how do we learn what grace is? We learn it directly from Him or indirectly through his followers in whom he lives. I have learned a lot about grace by hearing other people's stories and now I feel it is time to share mine.

Did your experiences with your parents color your understanding of God? For good or bad? Why? Do you have feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness, unworthiness? Do they affect how you relate to our heavenly father? 

Growing with Grace

"Mom! She's just playing the same notes over and over again!" My brother didn't often complain about my hours of practicing piano but that day I was determined to iron out the last kinks of the latest Handel sonata. It was so close. Almost perfect. After six hours I could play each section independently without mistakes but try and put the whole thing together and they popped up like so many weeds in my garden! I decided to rest my fingers and knew with satisfaction that tomorrow I would finally achieve my goal. It would be perfect. I could finally call myself a "pianist." 

If only I could counsel that little girl. If only she could understand that it wasn't about technical perfection. Music is about emotion, beauty, purpose, grace. It is for your own growth, benefit, and enjoyment primarily and others enjoyment secondarily. Life, too. But I was a goal oriented, highly motivated, competitive perfectionist. Those fluffy sentiments were too abstract for my concrete mind. But the reality is I made unachievable goals. There is no such thing as a perfect performance. There are beautiful works of art but artists are notoriously unsatisfied with their work. She said she wanted perfection. She really just wanted to be okay. To be loved. To be wanted. To be valued.

A few months after an unsatisfying but reportedly impressive performance I was told some of the worst news of my life. No more piano lessons. We couldn't afford them. 

But I knew it wasn't about not affording them. I had earned enough money on my own by that time to realize my family's finances were a problem with priorities, not cash flow. Once again, I was not a priority. 

I wasn't good enough.

Another link in the chain that bound me to perfectionism. I had believed in Jesus Christ as my savior as a seven-year-old, realizing that God is perfect and I couldn't live with him unless I had Jesus' help. It was the exact opposite of perfectionism but I've had so much internal bent and outside reinforcement that it's been a constant struggle to understand God's grace, his unmerited favor, throughout my adult life.

I hope that in sharing my journey you too can come to value God's grace and to allow Him to work his good purposes in your life. 

We can hope for perfection but not in this life. We can strive for holiness but not on our own. We can work toward justice but we will always be disappointed until God's grace brings us into his presence. But my greatest stumbling block was the belief that God would only "help those who help themselves." In Kyle Idleman's book "Grace is Greater" he wrote "We're able to receive God's grace only to the extent we're able to recognize our need for it." 

Oh how I need it. And the more I experience God's grace the more I realize I need. A lifetime of striving for perfection has hammered into my soul just how impossible that is. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast." (Eph 2:8-9)

I've had an epiphany. 

What if God's grace and power works IN my depression, IN the loss of Judah, IN Shoshana's cancer rather than DESPITE it? That would completely change my perspective toward these life-altering, inexpressibly painful experiences. 

Grace is Greater, page 157: "[W]e're able to receive God's grace only to the extent we're able to recognize our need for it... But grace enables us to celebrate our weakness."

1 Corinthians 1:9

He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful,who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 8:28-29

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

1 Corinthians 4:17-18

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

And my life verse ever since college: 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blamelessat the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

Honestly, I've heard these things many times before but it has hit me in a new way today. 

Grace is greater

I've been slowly reading and digesting an excellent book called "Grace is Greater" by Kyle Idleman these last few months. Normally I'm a speed reader but when a book is this dense with truth that I want to remember and incorporate into my life it's more impactful to read one chapter at a time and digest for at least a week. I think about it, ruminate on it, and generally consider how it can apply to my life. 

So I'm going to do a little gratefulness exercise. 

In the chapter "grace is more peaceful than your disappointments" he talks about complaining and its relationship to grace. "When you strip it down, complaining is a refusal to trust God and acknowledge his grace on your life." Time has given me distance from the repeated traumas in my adult life and years of therapy had given me tools to manage the emotional impact but I have yet to practice identifying the ways God has used those traumas to show grace to me or to those around me. "(Gratitude) recognizes that God's grace is reason enough to be thankful in all circumstances."

I'm grateful that my oldest child was born early in our marriage (despite our best attempts to avoid that) because that forced me to seek professional help for my depression. I'm grateful that her pregnancy catalyzed leaving my first job at an organization I could no longer support. I'm also grateful that pregnancy prevented me from getting a job I wasn't excited about which left me no choice but to instead go to wound care school.

I'm so grateful to have Abigail with us. At 8 weeks gestation I started bleeding and the ultrasound showed an incomplete miscarriage. Miraculously, God allowed his grace to heal the damage and give us the second child we prayed for. I'm grateful that I can now identify with the pain and help comfort so many of my friends who have gone through with early miscarriages.

I'm grateful for Shoshana's cancer. Believe it or not. 

Early in Shoshana's treatment it occurred to me that I could use this as a "do over." You see, I didn't get treatment for my major depression until halfway through Shoshana's pregnancy and I wasn't able to recover soon enough to bond with her as an infant. As a toddler she even showed beginning signs of reactive attachment disorder. Thanks to her horrible cancer treatment I was able to bond with my daughter in totally new ways and she became so much more confident and emotionally stable.

Judah, perfect Judah. I'm so grateful I got to carry him for nine whole months. I got to sense his emotions and he reacted to mine. I'm so grateful that he loved hearing his sisters laugh and even bumped my tummy at them, trying to play. I'm grateful that he never experienced sin or this broken world. I'm grateful that he went straight from my loving, warm, protective tummy to the embracing arms of Jesus without pain or suffering. I'm grateful I get to meet him someday.

I'm grateful that my dad stayed throughout my childhood though he had several opportunities to leave. 

But most of all, I'm grateful that God sent his son to a sinful world to pay the consequences for my sin. Losing my own son has brought me new perspective on how much love that takes. I certainly don't love any person in this world enough to sacrifice my son for them! But that's how much God loves me!