Tag: Grace

JOURNEY THROUGH OCTOBER: CONQUERING FEAR

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha KatzLeave a comment

~week two~day 3~

Christine Caine tells a true story of being lost in the wilderness after a jeep accident in the rain forest.  She recalls her conversations with God as she ponders all of the stupid choices her group made – – venturing out unprepared, telling no one where they went, wearing flip-flops in the jungle.  She contemplates all of the reasons why God should not rescue her since she got herself into this deadly mess.  One of the most telling lines in her story is where she says, If our example is Jesus . . . then we won’t distinguish between the one who is lost because of circumstances beyond his control and the one who willfully and willingly put himself there.

Sometimes I feel like the brown lab I grew up with.  When he was really bad after we weren’t home for a few hours, we would open the front door and he would be sitting there, but he wouldn’t look at us.  He sat there in plain sight, but he wouldn’t face us.  I suppose that’s shame.  Sometimes I feel like I put myself in my own mess.  There is just no way I am going to look Grace right in the face.  I will just sit there in my anxiety or mess or whatever.  With God sitting right across from me.  It is really hard to look Grace in the face when you are a mess.

There is a wonderful psalm which says, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered.  It’s hard to swallow what Grace and Love does.  When I am feeling unworthy, the undeserved part of grace blurs in my mind.  Grace is much easier to understand when I feel like I have a few good works in my back pocket.  The truth is no matter how you got into your mess, we all sometimes need to be rescued by grace.  We are not any less worthy than someone else who is more dutiful, responsible and faithful than we have been.  We all need to be saved.

So I’ll try to be brave.  I’ll try not to avoid eye contact when God sheds some light on my mess.  I’ll try to remember that undeserved applies all the time.  I’ll try to remember that I’m loved, so therefore, I will be saved.  Not just from circumstances beyond my control, but from my own self.

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Unpublished

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha Katz1 Comment

By Sasha Katz

I ran across an anonymous quote – – We all have chapters we would rather keep unpublished.  I love this quote.  The more I think about this quote, the more I love this quote.  In fact, I was listening to the Wally Show  this morning and the contest was to judge who had the best mind blowing quote.  I am going to go with this one.

My assumption is that, most of you reading this, are ladies.  We girls have so many moments that we would be happy to claim unpublished.  The view my mom and husband got when I was pushing my first baby out. Must stay unpublished!  How about the time my ex-step grandma proceeded to pull out everything she could find between the cushions on my couch, including coins, stale chips, popcorn, popped balloon pieces and other moldy junk. She piled all the stuff she found in front of her on the coffee table – during a family party. How about on my 20th birthday when everyone was going around the table telling their very best story of me . . . and my nine year old brother told about the time I walked down the hall and “let it rip!” Really. Should have been unpublished.

Don’t judge my life to be easy or simple by these goofy better off unpublished bits. The real stuff that we don’t want published is the stuff wrapped about pain and shame. The stuff we do retakes of in our mind 100 times over. But the retake in your mind doesn’t take away the real thing that went down in your her-story.

I have to tell you there are not many people out there who have retraced their steps as many times as I have. I hate to think that there are many of you out there who have asked God to forgive them for the same thing over and over again for a full decade. I hope to think that it’s mostly me. But, at the ripe old age of 39, I have let it all go. God has let me remember each and every wretched, sinful thing I have ever done. Everything that I am ashamed of. That blasphemed His name. That soiled His spirit in my temple. That was hypocritical, selfish and self-serving. That deeply hurt others. Everything that made a mess of the real me He knows me to be.

In His grace, there was a purpose to all of my laundry lists. I had a cross over point some time ago. I realized that, if I would let Him, He was intending to wash my mind, spirit and soul of the part of the girl that had gone all wrong. Instead of folding my laundry and putting it back in my closet for me to wear again and again, He was separating it as far as the east is from the west. For as often as I could bring a sin to mind, He was there to send it off to the bottom of the sea. I don’t know how He does these mysterious, miraculous works in us, but He does.

I once read an author who pondered the hours Jesus spent hanging on the cross. The author proposed that the time He hung represented the time it took to forgive in advance each and every sin committed by humanity. In addition to the physical pain, imagine what it was like for Jesus to bear all of our sins. You and I know a little about that because sometimes we bear our sins on our own. We know how bad that hurts. I don’t think we can imagine what bearing all of earth’s sins feels like – – coupled with the physical pain. It sobers you. It tugs at the part of you that has the capacity to feel gratitude; it tugs at the part of you that has the capacity to be merciful to others. It tugs at everything about you that you wish went unpublished. Because you know He had to suffer to make you clean and new. To make the unpublished you, Published.

unpublished

This post was inspired by Connie Inman’s pin of the quote herein. Thanks Connie!