Tag Archives: God’s grace

A Prayer for a Hot Mess

29 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Life, Pop, Pop Culture

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God, who often works best in chaos, here I am – your child – a blessed hot mess.

I carry too many items in my hands, resulting in me dropping things as I walk along my path. Or I stumble into chairs or couches or tables or doors as I carry on my day. I say the wrong things as my mouth becomes a waterfall for wrong terms and awkward jokes. My stole often leans too long on one side or my hair is tucked into my robe. Or my hair falls into my face, and as I fix it, my glasses drop to the ground. And, don’t forget, my desk is swimming in too many papers.

While I would like be the model for grace and move about the earth with every kind of smoothness there is, I have failed spectacularly.

I’m imperfect and incomplete.

But maybe this isn’t failure. Maybe being made in your image means that “hot messes” are ones who shift the world’s trajectory in meaningful ways. Maybe it means that we carry the Holy Spirit’s fires and winds in our passion, and in doing so, our form is a little unconventional.

And so, Creator of Living Art, if possible, make my life smooth. Yet if it isn’t your intentions for my life, let me use my messiness to set the world on a more-loving path. May the fire within me shine a justice-filled light into your world. And may your grace splatter upon all of your creation – including those of us in a sacred state of hot messiness.

Amen.

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The Lesson of the Visor

25 Tuesday Jul 2017

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When I was in eighth grade in 1987, we were given the assignment to design our own visors for the annual school parade and picnic.  I was excited at the prospect of designing my own visor and gave the task much thought, but couldn’t decide what to paint.

When the time came to draw the design onto the visor, I ended up painting too many objects on the front.  My grand project turned into a mess!  The design ended up looking cluttered, and I was distraught when looking at it.

I’m sure some tears were shed after looking at the item.  My hopes in having a beautiful visor to wear were dashed.  And then came one of our room moms: Mrs. Morgan.  She had been my Girl Scout leader for many years and was the mom of my middle school best friend.  Mrs. Morgan came up, assured me it was going to be ok, and then began to take my visor and paint over the busyness of the design.  She left my rainbow and Ziggy and took the attempts I had made at painting balloons and outlined each of them in silver paint.

When she was finished the artwork became something magnificent.  Instead of clutter were clouds.  The design flowed together.  I knew that I would be marching in the parade with a masterpiece on my head instead of the disaster I thought I would wear.

On that day in 1987, Mrs. Morgan did more than redesign the image of my visor; she taught me a priceless lesson: when we have a project full of errors, this isn’t the completed design of our project. Our designs aren’t permanently ruined.  God gives us grace and wisdom to understand how to take the messiness in front of us and craft something beautiful.

I carry this lesson with me.  Whether I’m working on a piece of artwork or writing project, helping out one of the youth in my church with their project, or working on another assignment that may not be coming together smoothly, God is always infusing my work with grace and mercy, helping me understand that there is new life in messes.

May we each carry the grace-filled lesson of my visor into our churches, homes, workplaces, and communities.

The Grace Project

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Life, Music, Pop, Pop Culture, Single in the Sanctuary

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image.jpgI give no grace to myself.

There.  I said it.  It’s been my reality for the 43 years I’ve been alive.  I’ve apologized millions of times for my existence.  My competitive nature does not play well with my graceless attitude because I compare myself with others and then give myself a tough time when I haven’t achieved the same.  I blame myself for not marrying in my twenties or thirties.  I blame myself for not having children or being at the top of my career.  I blame myself for my weight and all of my health issues (most of which I can not control).  I blame myself for the times when I fell short of my goals and dreams.

I blame myself when I forget something relatively small because I forget that I am human.

Because I am so hard on myself, I tend to really rob myself of grace when others give me a tough time about mistakes.  For some reason, ever since I was young, I believed that I needed to be my own worse critic, so when someone else is tougher on me than I am on myself, I raise my level of self-criticism.

I forget that my faith is one that is all about grace.  I neglect to acknowledge that God is pouring copious amounts of grace upon me even as I rob myself of the same. While I am generous in grace with others – mostly because that is the way I would want to be treated – I can not gift the same to myself.

Technically, living in my own critical, graceless head is hell because there is a wall between me and God’s mercy. If hell exists, it can’t be any worse than this, I now think to myself.

There have been times in my past when I’ve noticed that my soul is either filled with rage against me or completely empty.  My soul has lacked love from me, and now is the time to work on filling up that tank with something positive, not the negative it has become accustomed to.

So today I open myself up to the world of my greatest shortcoming: lacking self-grace.  Today, I move towards loving myself, knowing that I will continue to be human and continue to make mistakes.  And sometimes, what I will do will hurt someone else – not because I want it to, but because we all overlook others.  But now when I make those errors, it’s my call to begin the process of forgiveness, to extend reconciliation not only to neighbor but to self.

This new project of mine can be best summed up in the words of Florence + The Machine’s song “Shake It Out”:

And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart

Dear graceless heart, it’s time for you to go.  It’s time to heal from your scars.  It’s time to embrace grace as a way of living.