His grace flows down and covers me.

It covers me.  It covers me.  It covers me.  And covers me.

These lyrics struck me this morning in church.  I’ve sung them a lot, but never gave them much thought before.  Today, though, I thought about being covered by God’s grace.  I thought about how I often approach grace as something that is there to fill in the “gaps” in my righteousness.  I thought about how I act as though there might not be enough grace to stretch out over all of my imperfections.  I thought about how I perceive others to need less of a covering of grace because of how good they seem to be at getting things right.  Then, I thought about how none of us is good…not even one.  I thought about how my righteousness is as filthy rags to Him.  I thought about how none of my striving could make me better in His eyes.

And I thought about the fact that I am covered by His grace.  Covered.  All of me.  All of my sin.  All of my “righteousness”.  Everything.  He has covered me, and in so doing, has made me righteous before Him.  I know it’s pretty simple theology, but all too often, I live my life in ignorance of it.  I feel the weight of trying to manufacture my own righteousness, and the hopelessness of failing again and again, when at every moment, His grace is there covering me with a righteousness I could never earn or use up.  What freedom there is in knowing that!  His goodness amazes me still.

When I hear or read about the “best” ways to train, discipline, and teach my children, I usually end up feeling like I have gone horribly wrong somewhere.  After all, these ideas that get talked about really sound good – great, even.  They are full of compassion and grace, consistency and gospel.  Love is communicated even while discipline is carried out.  And honestly, the way I raise my kids looks nothing like this.

I have wrestled with God over this, and it’s not simply an issue of my lack of discipline in the matter (which, I admit, is a problem).  The problem I face is that even when I want and try to address problematic behaviors the “right” way, it feels completely wrong to me.  For one thing, I am not an effusive person…and I somehow feel like my kids will sense insincerity if I follow some scripted program for dealing with their sin.  For another thing, I myself don’t respond favorably to anything I perceive to be sugar-coated…I tend to actually prefer a blunt, perhaps more harsh, explanation…otherwise I feel like I’m being patronized.

I also have a very different perception of how God deals with me than how these ideas suggest we deal with our kids.  That’s not to say that He doesn’t deal that way with some, nor is it to say that my perception of how He deals with me is any less loving and gracious…it’s just different.  So, maybe, I can deal differently with my kids than someone else deals with theirs, and it can be okay.  Maybe the Bible doesn’t outline specifics, because methods aren’t hard-and-fast.  Maybe my heart for the Lord and my heart for my children matter more than my techniques.  So, maybe I should just focus on doing better at those things I know for sure are failings on my part, and not worry about the rest.  I’m sure, even in this – even through me, that God can work

I was throwing up yesterday.  Part of it was because I had a massive headache caused by clogged sinuses.  Most of it was because I am almost 10 weeks pregnant with our newest little one.  Yesterday was the first time this pregnancy I failed to keep food down…otherwise my stomach has only caused me problems in the morning when my stomach is still empty.  Not terribly pleasant, but better than usual, as far as pregnancies go for me.  Still, there is exhaustion, and weight gain (8 pounds so far…ugh), and “pregnancy brain”…which takes effect earlier with each pregnancy.

Life is forced to a snail’s pace around here…well, for me at least.  Schoolwork for the kids is pretty bare-bones, dinners are only firmly decided in the hour or so before meal-time…much too often, not what was in my meal plan…, housework has been almost entirely out of my hands, and I find that reclining on the couch for long periods of time is just not as appealing as it once seemed.

I would be lying if I said this is the part of pregnancy that I miss once the baby is here.  The truth is, this is the part of pregnancy that I most easily forget, and it’s probably best that way.  It’s not just hard on me, but on everyone.  My kids find themselves with less routine, but a lot more random tasks assigned them, and my husband takes over everything else…he puts aside projects and “down-time” to wash dishes and fold laundry and get me food and go shopping.

“Productivity” isn’t a word that describes our life these days…but, with an obvious exception.  The tiny little life that is being knit together inside me.  It’s easy to get to the end of the day and feel unaccomplished, overwhelmed, unsure if all those things being set aside will eventually get done.  But, really, the point of it all is so much more than worth it.  The unseen miracle being fashioned and formed in the womb may take some effort and energy, sometimes inadvertently attributed to a lesser purpose (ie, satisfying a craving for a cheeseburger), but to know that the “reward” for these sacrifices is a life – that knowledge give perspective, and humbles, and astounds me.

Because, really, I don’t have the first clue how to create life, but yet, there is life being created in me.  A precious, perfect life…dependent on me, but held by the hands of his or her Creator.  There’s no project or pursuit that can compare with that.

There are a lot of things going through my head that I think I would like to write about.  But, somehow, when I try, nothing comes out right.  Maybe I’m trying too hard, maybe I just don’t have a firm grasp on what I’m thinking, or maybe those things are just not meant to be said by me, right now.  Still, I want to write something that will express some part of the jumbled thoughts that I can’t seem to untangle, so I’m giving it another try.

I think my biggest hindrance in writing about things lately is that I’ve had difficulty seeing God’s redemptive workings in the midst of struggle these past several weeks.  And I am honestly striving to not write without somehow expressing how God has revealed his goodness to me through my circumstances. Yet, at the same time, I don’t want to paint a picture that shows more faith, or more insight, or more hope than I honestly have.

The reality is that I am struggling to see His face.  I find myself with conflicting desires and questionable motives, and at the end of the day, I sometimes feel like He’s just not okay with the meager offering I bring.  I tell myself that He’s not going to listen, or answer, or care until I can get “it” right.  And it can seem like circumstances support that.  There’s confusion in my soul.  My days are filled with unrest – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  It seems like the “devourer” is taking ground away from me.  I feel defeated and I wonder where it was along the way that I lost the battle.  I yearn for His presence, but I don’t know how to get there.

Most days, this is the condition of my heart and mind.

Sounds fairly absent of any understanding of God’s goodness, huh?  So, I avoid writing about it and I try to wrestle through it until I have an answer for why this is my portion right now.  I haven’t figured out the why, yet, though.  My vision is blurred and my soul is weary. The current condition of my faith feels hopeless.

But that doesn’t mean I am without hope.

Beneath all the wavering, crumbling walls that I have built, and sometimes tried to tear down, is an immovable foundation, and I always feel it firmly under my feet.  And though there are so many ways in which my faith is small and the meditations of my heart need to be brought into submission to Christ, God is gracious enough to give me reminders of His goodness – a moment of inexplicable peace in my soul, songs that have been on my heart being sung during worship at church, knowing that other people hear God saying some of the same things I’ve been hearing Him say – reminders that aren’t answers to my current struggles, but that help me to remember that I matter to Him, and that He is faithful to complete the good work He has begun in me.

I have thought a lot in recent months about being hidden in Christ.  Lost.  Unable to find myself…after all “he that finds his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for My sake shall find it”.  I have felt lost.  I have felt hidden.  I have struggled because I can’t seem to “find” myself.  But, today, I am wondering if I even know what this all means.  It has always sounded like a lofty, holy, noble goal to be hidden in Christ and only found in Him.

And I’m sure it is in God’s eyes.

But in my eyes?  It suddenly seems pretty lowly, humbling, lonely.  Even as I profess to desire this self-forsaken position, I fight with all I am against its fruition.  Not that I am near that fruition.  Hardly so.  But in seeing the beginning sacrifices, in feeling the initial lost-ness, I suddenly want to bring it to God and force Him to say there’s been some mistake – that this isn’t my intended portion, that this isn’t His provision for me in this moment.

In reality, I don’t want to lose myself.  As much as I don’t like who I am much of the time, there remains some self-centered core to my being that wants people to see me, and love me, and even judge me.  What happens if, one day, I cease to be seen?  What if, one day, the only thing anyone sees in me is Christ?  Okay, I know that is an impossible hypothetical…but is it supposed to scare me?  It’s not, right?  I’m supposed to yearn for that possibility.  Clearly, Christ is so infinitely better than me…why wouldn’t I want to be seen only as in Him?

I want to be loved for me, not for Christ in me.  The problem with that (aside from my obvious unloveability)?  God is not glorified when people see and love me.  If someone professes to see good in me, then I am somehow not portraying that none of that good is me, that it is all Christ.  I need to be hidden.  And I need to care only about how God sees me.  I need to find my life in Him alone.  His approval, His love, His acceptance – not anyone else’s – need to matter to me.  I realize there are times when this will need to be walked out in relationship with others – but I also have to be okay when it must be walked out in loneliness and obscurity.  When He wants me to be satisfied with Him, I can’t be seeking after other desires.  He needs to be my life, and my life needs to be His.

I think I need to learn to be myopic.  I guess from some perspectives, that might sound like a bad thing.  “Short-sighted” is not usually something said as a compliment.  Yet, I’m learning that there is benefit in only seeing what immediately surrounds you.  ‘Cause you can’t tell if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence if you can’t see the grass.  I need to not be seeing any grass but my own.  I need to realize that it doesn’t matter what someone else’s life looks like, because God didn’t call me to be someone else.

I won’t say that there aren’t good examples out there to learn from, but somehow, instead of gleaning, I tend to pile condemnation on myself and end up feeling pretty hopeless about my meager attempts to succeed at life.  So, for now, I need to just focus on what’s going on inside this house and this family.  After all, it’s not like I need to look at someone else to see areas that need improvement.  And maybe by not looking at others, I can filter out the “very necessary” from the “that would be nice”.  Maybe I can decide how life should look based on who we are instead of who someone else is.  Maybe I can start seeing the good, unique, and gifted aspects of who we are and realize those can (and should!) be different from what someone else can claim.  I guess we’ll see.

When disappointments come, I often see myself for who I really am….and I don’t like it.  At all.  See, I hate being disappointed.  I usually go out of my way to have unnecessarily low expectations so that they don’t go unmet.  That’s probably not the most mature way to avoid disappointment, but it’s what I do.

Yet, somehow, disappointments still come.  Shocking, I know.  And when they do, I become childish.  I feel like God has let me down, so I get angry at Him.  I feel like people have let me down, so I get angry at them.  And then I see how faithless and undone I have become by what is often something relatively insignificant, and I get angry at myself.  Is this the real fruit of my life?  Not the good spiritual fruit of Galatians 5, but all of the bad fruit that would indicate a bad “tree”?

I don’t know how to respond.  On one hand, I think I just need more discipline…somehow, I need to figure out how to keep silent, and have an eternal perspective, and respond in faith-filled, heartfelt prayer…but in my own strength.  On the other hand, I think I shouldn’t have to do this in my own strength.  I think God should be doing something to help me…shouldn’t He?  In either case, I feel pretty hopeless.  If it’s up to me, then I feel certain that I will always completely fail.  If it’s up to God, then I wonder why in the world He hasn’t helped me so far.  I’ve been a Christian for pretty much all of my life, but at these times, I feel like such a baby in my faith, and it discourages me.  It’s hard to even want to try anymore.

But I will.

I wonder if that’s part of the lesson for me.  Being faithful in the trying.  Recognizing, again, that who I am is not who I need to be and always yearning to be better, for Him.  I wish the changing came easily.  I wish I had a character that even slightly resembled Christ.  I wish I could understand why things just don’t seem to sink in.  I wish I was more than I am.  But, for now, I just need to cling to the truth that He is faithful to complete the good work He has begun in me…whether I think it’s my effort or His, ultimately, He is the one who has promised to accomplish it.

Sometimes, it’s hard to write about the things that are on my mind and heart.  Sometimes, they are just too random that I feel incapable of forming cohesive sentences.  Sometimes, they are too personal…revealing more of me than I would like.  Sometimes, I worry that I might offend someone.  But sometimes, I feel like I am about to burst if I don’t write something, so even if the words come out in a confusing, embarrassing, offensive mess, I write.  That’s what this post is today.

There’s a lot on my heart and mind right now.  There are wonderings of whether I am really doing all I can for God.  I mean, I’m sure the answer is no, but am I possibly doing worse than I imagine?  I don’t necessarily feel like God has called me to a lot of soapbox-type of ministering.  What I feel compelled to is more often the opposite…closed rooms, silent moments of kneeling before Him, pleading with Him, “standing in the gap” for people and circumstances, believing with all my heart that God hears and answers.  But is there more?  I wonder and examine my heart and motives.  I second guess myself.  I think about my fears and question if they are hindering me from something more.  You know what, though?  I have come to the conclusion that God knows me and He is faithful to me.  What I mean is, He is going to let me know what I need to know.  If I have to wonder or worry, chances are, whatever I am wondering or worrying about is not important.  If I am honestly seeking Him, He will help me with the rest.

I also have been thinking today about how God sees us when we are hypocritical…when we honor Him with our lips, but our hearts are far from Him.  If we come to Him with the right words, the right outward expressions, but with our own plans and purposes, might we offend Him?  I know that one version of 1Corinthians 13 says that love takes no offense, but it seems like there were times when God did take offense in the Bible…even if that wasn’t the word used.  To one of the churches in Revelation (pardon me for not looking it up at the moment), He said that He wished they were either hot or cold, but because they were lukewarm, He would spit them out of His mouth.  Sounds a lot like offense to me.  And the condition of that offense sounds a lot like many Christians today.  We’ve put God on our level.  We’ve made Him our friend and confidant.  We’ve counted our plans as being as good as His, as long as they seem good, even if we haven’t consulted Him on them.  We’ve decided that He wants us to come and sing at Him with smiles and clapping for exactly 20 minutes, and that He will feel worshiped.  What I think?  He would prefer silence over performance.  He would take a heartfelt “thank you” over a declaration shouted because that’s what everyone else is doing.  He would rather half as many people show up at a church service if it meant that the appeal would be found in Him and not in the “everything else”. I think He’s jealous for our time and attention and praise.  I think He’s waiting to be truly exalted, which by necessity, means we will be low in comparison…humbled.  I think He wants to be seen as more than a friend…I think He wants to be seen as holy.  Or maybe, more appropriately, HOLY…because He’s not like us. He is so much more, and He deserves everything we have to give, and more.

Ugh.  I hate pretense.  I had written a couple other posts on here…an introduction, an attempt at something meaningful…but they weren’t me, honestly.  If you want to know me…well, I was gonna say you could keep reading this blog for a while, but no matter how long you read, you won’t really know me.

I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make – thinking that somehow reading words that have been pondered over, deleted and rewritten who knows how many times, left as unfinished thoughts until a convenient moment, polished and fashioned to paint the perfect picture…that those words will be the means to forming a true connection, to really knowing someone.  They won’t.  Or at least, they never have for me.

They have helped me maintain a connection with someone already truly known – someone who has heard me fumble for words, or have something come out the wrong way, or seen me turn beet red from embarrassment over something silly, and they have helped me learn a whole lot about countless other people.

But it’s weird and unnatural to find out information about your neighbor by checking their status updates and blogs, when you see them a couple times a week and neither of you can seem to manage more than a 10 second conversation.  It just makes me think that I shouldn’t know everything I know about them, and they shouldn’t know things about me either.  I can’t help but feel like knowledge of someone should be earned, not brazenly displayed as a cure to someone’s boredom in the middle of the day.

I’ve just realized lately that I don’t actually know anybody I see on a regular basis.  And they don’t know me.  At all.  We know a lot about each other, but that makes conversation even more difficult.  If you already know everything I did this week, how can we even start a conversation?  It’s frustrating, and isolating, and deceptive, and sometimes hurtful.

All that to say, you won’t really get to know me from what I write on here, but maybe you’ll identify with me occasionally, or get a new perspective on something, or maybe just find a momentary solution to your boredom some afternoon.  After all, there’s only so much you can expect to get out of some words on a screen.