Have More Grace (day 7/7)

Have More Grace (day 7/7) - Day # 33

Dear God,

Lord, I just want to lift up our weary heads and burdens to You. For You say, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30) I ask that truth to not just be head knowledge but heart knowledge. I am so tired of trying so hard. I am so tired of feeling like I’m not enough because I’m not trusting that You are more than enough. I want to rest. Help us to learn from You.

In Jesus Name I pray, Amen.

Opening Thoughts:

I’m kind of hard on myself.

I expect a lot from myself. If you know me, I’m always pushing myself, challenging myself to be better, and I’m not satisfied with “okay”. It’s a great trait to have sometimes because I get to live such an extraordinary life. I am able to go beyond what’s asked in faith, love, and hope. Just life in general. I think it’s how God wired me honestly. I have the desire and capacity for the “best” of all life has to offer.

Sometimes, I definitely go overboard. I’ll push myself to exhaustion to make sure I really understand material that I’m already competent in. I’ll be unforgiving of myself when I make mistakes or have an off day/week (read: this week). I struggle with meeting my own standards, and it’s a long way down from where I fall when I eventually do slip.

Around April, I wrote this blog: HOW I'M HANDLING MY MISTAKES - BLOG # 6, and I talked about the toll my self-induced perfectionism has taken on my mental health. Maybe my parents named me Grace for a reason because of how much of it I need for myself. For others, I can be more understanding. I look at their situations, their upbringing, their emotional state, maybe they didn’t sleep, and I try (to my own human limited ability) to see the best in them.

For me, I should’ve known better. I should’ve done better.

As I unpack my internal struggles, I think I have such a hard time with loving myself and letting myself be human because of my relationship with my parents and with God. Sometimes I can feel like I owe them “being good”. Instead of feeling thankful and responding appropriately by being a grace-filled and confident person, I am wrecked with a lot of grief and shame.

For my relationship with my parents, I think I wanted to be the best daughter I could be. I didn’t want to be a “problem” child because they already had so many problems. Why did I want to be another burden? Sometimes I wish I wasn’t alive because I’m one less mouth to feed, one less kid to worry about, and I spiral into despair about why they’re better off without me.

I’m the eldest daughter. I have to “make it” for my family. They’ve invested too much. I owe them a good, happy life. I’m their retirement plan. I’m going to be a doctor. I’m picture perfect. I have to be otherwise it was a waste of their love, their lives, and their dreams. I can’t live with myself if I don’t live for them now.

I live in that constant war zone. I’m good if I make them happy. I’m good if I am worth their investment. I’m good if I just crumple myself up into nothingness so that their sacrifices could be worth something. Even writing that out, I feel grieved at my own warped thinking. It’s all about performance. It’s based on this condition of me not having any sense of self. It’s nothing about love because real love has a ‘self’ to begin with. I don’t have to be perfect to be loved by them. I don’t have to put myself last just because they put me first. I can put myself alongside them in value.

I can say to myself, “I’m thankful for everything my parents have done for me. I know they did all these things because they love me, and I love them too so that means being the person they made me to be: independent, confident, and able to make my own choices without guilt or feeling indebted to them. Sometimes that means I listen and do what makes them happy. Sometimes that means I have to choose things that make me happy because they worked so hard to give me that opportunity in the first place. It always means I respect and honor them, but that doesn’t mean I owe them my life because they gave me theirs.”

If I had a child, and they saw me struggling to provide for them, go through hardships, and they ever thought they were a waste or a burden or they owed me I would weep. I would tell them, “It’s worth it because I love you. It’s not a burden to love you. You are worthy of my love because you’re my child. You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to have the best life possible. I don’t want you to say ‘sorry’, I want you to say ‘thank you’ then live the best life possible.”

If their goodness or obedience to me was out of guilt, I wouldn’t be happy. I wouldn’t say I was a “successful” parent. I would want to teach them that gratitude is an outpouring of acknowledging everything that I did and responding in love. It’s not feeling forced to be good or kind to me.

Even if they made mistakes, even if they didn’t follow my plans for them, even if they left home, I would never think it wasn’t worth it to do what I could for them. I wouldn’t see it as a burden but a blessing. I wouldn’t want them to do things for me out of guilt but in a response of l-o-v-e. I wouldn’t want them to live life in constant burden, fear, and anxiety trying to please me for what I did for them. That’s not the relationship I would long for even if they didn’t choose to make me happy. It would make me happier that they would be able to look at me, choosing a life they made out for themselves, knowing that no matter what they have my support.

I have that relationship with God. I look at God, the cross, and my heart feels heavy with this burden to ‘repay’ His love. I get into this bidding war with Jesus on who can love more (as several of my spiritual mentors have mentioned). I exhaust myself to tears trying to be this perfect daughter. It’s not about gratitude anymore, it’s just because I don’t know my true relationship with God. God isn’t looking at me to be anything more than I am, God isn’t asking me to pay back this massive debt, and God loves me just as much as He did when I didn’t even believe or trust Him.

Jesus didn’t say I owe Him my life because He gave me His life. That’s not love. Love is Jesus dying for me because He loved me, and love is me choosing to honor and obey Him because I love Him. I can get into anxious fits wondering if God is happy with me and my life. Is He mad at me? Is He upset at my choices? Am I making Him regret His choice to love me? Am I worth His love?

God comforts me. He’s not looking for where I’m wrong or bad, in fact He’s the reason I can be good. He’s paid the debt, there’s nothing left for me to give so now I can be myself. I can choose to love Him. I think God is happiest when I choose to love Him not when I feel guilted into it. God’s happiest when I’m myself in front of Him, not forcing myself into a cookie-cutter good daughter.

“You try so hard to be a good daughter, Grace. You are a good daughter, but not because of what you did but because of what Jesus did for you.”

I live a works-based gospel so often. It’s so corrosive to my soul. I live to be loved when I’m already loved. God is rewriting the mental script I have of myself. I don’t have to enslave myself to the wishes and whims of anyone because I am already good, already accepted, and already debt-free.

I can be thankful, not indebted, to my parents for all they’ve done. I can make choices for myself as a growing adult that they won’t always appreciate now, but isn’t that a sign of success? I’m not just a carbon copy of them that they poured into so that I can be everything they want me to be. If that’s true they just want a servant. But I’m their child, a part of them but still belonging to me, and that’s the opportunity they worked so hard for: for me to be able to be my own person.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon them, if anything I can love them genuinely because I have a personhood myself. I can love them because I want to love them. If I make them happy because it’s an overflow of the happiness I have from choosing to live the life I’ve chosen in freedom. I don’t have to be burdened by mistakes or trying to pay them back for their lives. That isn’t love, that’s fear. That’s shame. That’s everything Jesus died for so that I wouldn’t have to live enslaved anymore. I can have a grace-filled relationship with them like the one God has with me.

It’s so easy to slip into that mentality because it feels natural to us to have to work for something. So to be good we have to check off all these marks. So to be loved we have to do all these acts. So to be forgiven we have to repay all our debts. The gospel of Jesus is about Jesus checking off all the marks, about Jesus doing all the acts, about Jesus repaying all the debts.

So, today is a day about more Grace (hehe). More me!

I need grace everyday. I need grace for the times I don’t live up to my own or God's own expectations of ‘good’. I need grace for the times I sin and even the times I don’t. I need grace for everyday and every moment of my life. God’s grace covers over all sins. It covers the debts I once owed. It cuts the show on the performance I make myself play in order to be worthy of love.

Grace is all you need! My parents named me well.

There’s this song: Grateful by Elevation Worship that says

I give thanks for all you have done

And I will sing of your mercy and your love

Your love is unfailing

Lord, I am grateful

That’s a song of freedom! We can’t praise if we’re shackled. We can’t lift our hands and live our lives chained. God has made a way where there was no way. Don’t look back at all you did as things you have to now make up for. Look at God. Look to Jesus. Look at His goodness and give thanks. When we don’t live in grace, we live a self-centered life. God, look at how bad I am. Look how much I owe. Do you think God wants that for you? No way! He wants you to look at Jesus who set you free, to focus on how good He is, what Jesus did out of love and sheer joy, and now we can be grateful! That’s the grace-filled life.

If someone gives you a gift, do you think about what you need to get them back? What you need to do for them now? How you can make up for the gift? Somehow make it worth it? Know that God wants you to freely accept the gift. Know that God is not giving so that we owe debts, God is giving so that we're freed from them

Dear God,

I pray that You would give us Your grace to understand the depth and truth of the gospel. I ask that You strike fear, shame, and guilt from our hearts. We don’t owe You for what You’ve done for us, and we don’t need to feel that way in any of our relationships. We can have grace for our mistakes. We can live and choose to respond in thanksgiving to the kindness of love You and others show us. Help us not to live in anything but confidence that comes by faith through grace alone. Jesus, You are our Redeemer. You restore. Free us. Help us to live our unique lives to the fullness of our purpose that can only be lived in freedom.

In Jesus name I pray, Amen.

Listen to:

Grateful

Read:

Do We Owe God Anything?

You Loved First

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Have More Grace (day 7/7) - Day # 33

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