Day 2: Grace
On the Second Day of MissMas I give to me…Grace
On the second day of MissMas, I want to discuss the gift of grace. Many times, we are often quick (well sometimes not so quick, who are we kidding) to give grace to others but find it hard to give to ourselves. Why is this? Why are we our own worst critics? I think it’s because we haven’t really learned the rhythms of grace. The eb and flow of life choices and how beautiful the journey is. Grace has many definitions ranging from a period allowed before payment is due to a prayer during meals to goodwill to the free and unmerited favor of God. Grace gives the benefit of the doubt, it gives room to make mistakes and get back up to try again with or without the consequences of the error.
For Believers, we receive the free gift of Grace when we realize that there is nothing in and of ourselves that we can do to earn it from God, it’s recognizing and accepting that we serve a God of ‘another chance’. It is God recognizing the humans that we are and allowing us room to stretch out into our imperfections while keeping us safely within the boundaries of His protection. If a Holy, Matchless God could give us this wonderous gift for free knowing that we would repeatedly both willingly and consciously take advantage of it, even in our futile attempts to be worthy of such a gift – when will you, my Beautiful Queen, extend the same grace to yourself? When will you stop striving to be who you think the world wants you to be and stretch out into the Woman that you are? When will you realize that you are enough – you with your messy hair, chipped nails, immaculate eyebrows, tailored power suit and baby throw-up sweatshirt- just the way you are? God made you perfectly before the formation of the world and he knew every bad decision and blatant sin that you would commit – yet He still died with your name on His lips – to extend eternal grace to you.
So for today – let’s try to extend a little grace to ourselves. This isn’t an excuse to not leave everything you’ve got on the field, to actualize your life and reach your personal goals. It’s a breather when you don’t get everything right. It’s being ok with not cooking dinner tonight after working 15 hours and letting the kids pick their favorite cereal. It’s washing the clothes tomorrow and watching ‘Jingle Jangle’ for the 3rd time with extra butter popcorn tonight. It’s taking the day off work and surprising a friend with a social distance picnic instead of over preparing for the same meeting that you’ve been stressing about for a week. It’s being ok with not being ok, but not being ok staying there.
Grace gives you room to just be you today. Accept your beautiful imperfections and bask in the light that is YOU. We all see it, you can do great things beautiful girl, if you would only give yourself Grace to try again.