Friday, April 08, 2011

Grace Explosion:

So this blog here is not where I talk about my walk with my Savior, or my Spiritual growth. It's about housekeeping, and such stuff like that. A place that you used to be able to come to read pithy tales of my life as a homemaker, to find badly written recipes, and funny stories about my hilarious kids. Lately, it's been a place you could come and hear the crickets chirping.
Today I am breaking from all of that. Today any readers I have left will see in full force that which drives me. My God. I have no idea what the future of this blog holds, whether it will be a place for more similar musings or if it will return to the way of the chirping crickets, but I do know this:
What I say today, is what I have wanted to say for a long time. I just couldn't hold it in any longer. It exploded.


You know what I love? I love when Christians embrace grace so hard that it explodes and oozes out all over anyone who stands near them. Try it today.

Do you have a load of dirty dishes, a mountain of laundry, and children who would rather be chasing each other around with knives than singing Koombaya? Did you homemade yogurt curdle? Did your homemade laundry soap leave your clothes smelling sour? Does your garden have more weeds than carrots? Are you a housekeeping failure?

Did your child get seriously ill from a vaccine? Did your son get hepatitis from your lack of vaccinating him? Did your 15 year old daughter come home and tell you she is having a baby? Did you have to place your parents in a nursing home? Did you two year old paint his walls with peanut butter? Or worse? Is your 8 year old hanging upside from a tree, his arm in a cast from when he fell last week? (You might want to go get him down.) Are you a mothering failure?

Do you have a husband who comes home and sighs because his personal time is interrupted by you handing him a stinky baby, his son handing him a notebook of unsolvable math problems and you giving him a list of all the ways your day SUCKED? Are you a wifely failure?


Did you forget to read your Bible today? And yesterday too? Oh, and last week? Was the last time you touched your Bible on Sunday when you carried it to church? Did you forget to pray for your kids today? Did you let an inner curse fly into your head when your neighbor’s dog wouldn’t SHUT UP at 3 am? Ummm.... was that curse actually a bit less than an inner mental one? Are you a Spiritual failure?

Did you hear the phone ring and then ignore it because, well, you just couldn’t deal with her today? Did you avoid opening an email from the church children’s worker leader so that you can later say. “Oh, I am sorry, I never got that email?” Did you eat that package of snicker bars that were meant for the food pantry? And the cans of tuna too? Are all that you have left those 15 cans of Rutabegas? Are you a ministry failure?

Did you start ANOTHER diet today? Which is different than the one you started yesterday? Did you gain 5 pounds on the “eat the snickers that were meant for the food pantry diet? Did you skip a shower today? And maybe yesterday too? Have you skipped shaving you legs for over a year? Did you throw out your fat jeans because they were too small? Are you a personal failure?

I have some news for you. Sit down, because it will blow you away. Today I embraced God’s grace for myself, and it’s about to explode all over you!

Guess what? God loves you. He doesn’t care that you are a failure. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS FOLLOWERS ARE FAILURES.

All that stuff above? It’s pretty bad (especially if you kids are chasing each other with knives. I would put a stop to that if I were you). It’s REALLY REALLY BAD. It’s selfishness, it’s manipulation, it’s lying, it’s... well, if you really ate those snickers bars, it’s stealing. You are a BAD person! Yay! You are a FAILURE! YAY!

Cause guess what? Everything I know about God says that every single person he loves is a PRETTY bad person. A failure.

God is a lover of people failures.

I don’t know how it is. I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t have any analogies that even come close to describing it. Fathers don’t love this way. Mothers don’t love this way. God is different and he FRIGGIN loves me.

People. Do you get it? Even while I am mired in sin (which will be the rest of my ever lovin’ life) God LOVES ME.

So. You are a failure. Good. Means you are human. Like me.

Oh, and guess what?

GOD LOVES YOU!!!!

So, accept it and then go explode yourself all over someone with all that pure joy you have.

Disclaimer: I KNOW that God doesn’t want you to keep cussing the neighbor’s dog out every morning at 3 AM. I know He wants you to dig in His Word more than Sundays.

But He also wants you to embrace HIS GRACE! And He wants you to do that first.

So, tell me. What will your grace explosion look like today?

5 comments:

Mariel said...

Thank you. That was absolutely perfect.

Robin said...

Opps. comment on the letter post was supposed to be here.

Carrie said...

Thanks for writing this. I needed to hear it. Love you guys.

Megan said...

I needed this Becka. Thanks! I am a failure too and God loves me despite of it. :) Love and miss you guys!

Pippajo said...

This is tremendous! I love it! And, yes, I am a complete and total failure in every area of my life in every way!

Thank God for grace!