Grace

This is my favorite subject. More specifically, God's grace. Learning to live in it, and give it, is the purpose of my life.

I learned about grace in my late teens and early 20's. When I graduated high school I got married to a good christian man. I loved that he and I shared a passion for God and would spend time praying together. He and I lived about 5 hrs apart and often talked on the phone about God and our shared faith. Two weeks after we got married, I found out he was gay. He started being unfaithful the first month we were married.

I had moved away from my family and friends to marry my new husband and the support system I had around me was my husband's family and our church (which he had grown up in) so I didn't feel like I had a confidant I could turn to.

My husband's family did not know about his sexual activity and certainly did not think he was unfaithful to me. So they couldn't understand why his new wife only cried most of the time.

There was a Pastor in our local church who had been friends with my Dad for many years and being that he was the only person I felt familiar with, I told him about my marriage. He took it as an invitation to express sexual interest.  To make this matter worse, I told a young woman who attended our church all of what had happen, she told her boyfriend, who told the Pastor, which in turn met with the church leadership to discuss this with this particular Pastor who, of course, denied it. So the leadership was planning to ask me to leave the church.

I can't even express my devastation.  I had never felt so alone.

I went to work in a little ice cream shop in a local mall. There were two men who owned a women's clothing store. They were both very nice to me. Mark was especially kind and handsome. I am sure you can guess where this is going. An affair.

His attention made me feel alive and filled with hope. I thought finally I was going to be loved the way I had wanted for a lifetime. It lasted about a month.  I didn't think about his wife or my husband, I just felt good after a long season of fear and loneliness. The affair ended just like affairs always do. I was heartbroken. The bible says there is pleasure in sin for a season. That is true. What you find at the end of that season is the ugliest you. Hopelessness, pain, betrayal, emptiness. The memory of feeling good, the pain lingers to taunt you. It's your parting gift. Thank you for playing. Sorry you lost so much. Please leave the stage.

That would be a pitiful, meaningless story about how pathetic I am except God is a faithful redeemer. His word says in 2 Timothy 2:13 that he is faithful even if I am faithless.

I came home late one night after another long night out of trying to find some peace in the very wrong place, feeling so empty. The more I poured myself out, the emptier I grew.  I laid down on my sofa, with my husband asleep in one room and my precious daughter in the other, overwhelmed by how far away I was from peace. Unexpected and certainly  not summoned from me, God's loving presence swept over my heart. I knew him, I know him. I was so humbled by the kindness of it. I felt pure love. I wondered, God how can you come to me here, now where I am, so low? This is the worst I have ever been.  I wish I could tell you some profound word he said or some scripture that came to me. It was just love, and a reminder that he was there if I wanted to reach out to him. I did.

That moment of kindness, when I did not deserve it changed me forever. It started a revolution in me. God chose to give the best he had for the worst in me. What he asked from me was that I surrender to him. Give myself away, like I had tried to in all the relationships where I'd struggled to find meaning and purpose for myself.

I have spent my lifetime, learning more and more about  grace. How it changes me. How it calls me to something higher. Walking with me, lifting me, carrying me. It still comforts me.

Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

The challenge is learning to give it away.