in the grip of grace

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I am 32 years old and I have been a Christian since I was in the third grade (that's when I remember consiously making the choice, at least. A guy at the camp I was at asked, "Where would you go if you died tonight?" Aghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to go to heaven.)

I feel like I'm just stepping into the full realization of God's grace for me, and what it means for day-to-day living. Accepting grace is HARD for me, really really hard. I want to "do" to gain approval. I want people to notice how great a person I am. I want people to notice what a great mom I am. I want people to say, "That Rachel, she's such a great writer." "That Rachel, she's such a great friend." "That Rachel, no one can hold a candle to her mad mothering skillz!"

Enter screeching record.

I've always heard that the grace of God will cover me, but I've always thought that I had to DO something to earn it. It still blows my mind that I don't.

I see my people-pleasing behaviors in all areas of my life. Last night Asher said to me, "Why did you talk to me so mean?" We had a horrible time getting him to bed, and I had to be very stern with him. I was thinking later, wondering if I really DID sound mean, or if I just sounded stern. I'm thinking I sounded stern, and he's used to the Mama who always gives in when he asks to stay up "just five more minutes".

My kids have me figured out. Already, they can use my people-pleasing personality to their advantage. Don't worry, we don't need to clean our rooms! Mommy will do it! And then I end up frustrated and upset.

Grace means that God will stand in the gap where I fail. I get so exhausted thinking about the world my kids are living in. The world wants them to be and do so much that is different from what God wants for them. I worry and fret about it instead of taking it to the Lord in prayer, as the old hymn states.

My friend Jess sent me the most amazing book in the mail about a year ago. I had been praying for the last few weeks that God would give me "signs" (ah, the old lazy prayer of the struggling Christian), that he'd lead me in the direction he wants my heart to go. I've felt thirsty and dry lately.

I was cleaning out a "junk" drawer and found the book, just itching to be read. It's a book written by a priest who spent 15 years in a hard labor camp in Communist Russia, simply because he was a priest. The title? "He Leadeth Me", and it's by Walter J. Ciszek.

I've been struggling with what God's will for me looks like, on a day-to-day basis. I want His will for me to be something big and grand. I'm realizing that God's will for us is what we're experiencing, right now, this day, this moment.

God's will for me today is for me to be fully present for all people I come into contact with today. His will is for me to clean up the kitchen, do some more laundry, make a noon sandwich for myself, and clean the dandruff out of Phoebe's hair. It's not rocket science and it's not exciting, but I want to be in the center of it, because it's His will for me.

from p. 137:
It's easy to lose sight of the vision (to build up the Kingdom of God on earth), to become discouraged, to feel helpless and useless as Christians in the drab lives we led and the conditions under which we tried to work. But whoever has an easy life? The vision of the kingdom, the call of CHrist to labor and suffer with him, had overtones of a great and noble crusade - yet we must each of us translate that vision and retain that spirit in the routine, humdrum events of every day, even days in a prison camp.


It would be easy, we think to ourselves, to be constantly on fire with that vision if we could be a Francis Xavier or a Richard the Lion-Hearted, converting the Indies or scaling the walls of Jerusalem, sword in hand, caught up in the tumult of battle to win some great victory.


We forget that Xavier, too, lived one day at a time, frustrated and perhaps discouraged, each twenty-four hours filled with as many defeats and frustrations as victories, each hour made up of sixty minutes of humdrum things and little people busy and concerned about many other things, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. As he went about trying to preach the gospel, how often must Xavier have wondered whether it would ever be possibly to reach the millions of people around him? How often must he have felt discouraged at the individuals he met each day who failed to respond to his preaching? How often must he have despaired of the evil in the world around him, or felt helpless in the face of it?


God's will for me is this day, this minute, this moment. It's not always exciting, and I will fail miserably sometimes as a mother and wife, and other times I'll think I'm doing the best job ever.

This is a rambling post, and I don't even know what I'm trying to say. I guess I'm trying to "work out my salvation", and if it helps someone else struggling along, too, then it was worth writing in a public forum.

As an aside, my living room actually CAN be clean! Look, look, before it's gone:

Just don't open up the front hall closet, or you will be buried in the deluge of junk that rolls out and never be heard from again...